Street Life
They say silence is golden, but I think in some instances it becomes very destructive to society. So as a concerned citizen of Zimbabwe, I would like to air my disgruntlement at the rate at which Zinara is failing to execute its duties. Barring the chaos and confusion which characterised the introduction of new licence discs, I think there is a pertinent issue which requires urgent and undivided attention — the issue of the construction of toll gates.
Despite that Zinara gets 90% of the fees collected every month from the several toll gates dotted generously on our roads, there seems to be literary no movement in the construction of proper structures which deserve to be called toll gates.
The current rudimentarystructures that we call toll gates don’t really deserve that name and it beats me to realise that three years after the erection of these toll collection points, not even one out of the 22 or so has been constructed properly with all the paraphernalia to ensure the security of the toll fees collector and the collected fees themselves.
Not even reports of toll fee leakages have aroused any sense of urgency on the part of Zinara officials to do something about upgrading the structures which are otherwise dangerous to the people who staff them. Imagine what would happen to the hapless toll collector and a few security details from ZRP and sometimes ZNA if a heavily laden haulage truck’s brakes were to fail when it was about to approach any toll gate in Zimbabwe. Your guess is as good as mine.
There is one toll gate just before Masvingo city, which was hit by a haulage truck and I would like to speculate that the Zimra official who was on duty might have lost his/her life. So this serves to show how unsafe these toll gates are and there is every need for Zinara to expedite the construction of proper structures.
With reports that these toll gates gross close to US$1,5 million a month, it would baffle even an individual with the thinking capacity of the ministers, who were duped by the famed diesel n’anga, as to why there isn’t any construction of toll gates taking place at the moment.
Please Zinara, do something or we need an explanation from your communications department sooner rather than later.
