BY MIRIAM MANGWAYA Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA) has written to the Zimbabwe National Road Administration (Zinara) to hand over vehicle licensing responsibilities to local authorities to enhance transparency and accountability. CHRA alleges that Zinara is failing to disburse licensing fees towards road rehabilitation. Rueben Akili, the CHRA programmes manager said: “Harare has a road network of 4 000 kilometres and due to lack of financing, since Zinara took over vehicle licensing in 2008, the other 50% of the roads are unnavigable,” Akili said. “Local authorities have no funds to rehabilitate them because Zinara is retaining the greater amount of funds meant for their rehabilitation. We cannot monitor how Zinara funds are used due to hierarchal barriers.” He accused Zinara of abusing funds while roads were in bad shape. In a letter dated February 8, 2021, CHRA together with the Passengers Association of Zimbabwe requested Zinara to release the figures of the disbursed funds for the year 2020 so that they could be able to monitor and assess the management of the funds on road rehabilitation. Zinara spokesperson Tendai Mugabe said the parastatal had not received the letter from CHRA.

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