No let up to vehicle licensing chaos
Saturday, 02 June 2012 19:08
BY LESLEY WURAYAYI
CHAOTIC scenes of motorists jostling to get the new vehicle licence discs at
the country’s post offices continued last week despite an extension of the
registration deadline to June 30.
Motorists who spoke to The Standard said they were spending many hours
queuing to get the new licence discs and criticised the Zimbabwe National
Road Administration (Zinara) for lack of forward planning.
A Harare motorist, Artwel Sibanda, who was queuing with hundreds of other
motorists at Borrowdale Post Office, said getting the new licence discs had
become a daunting task as people were spending up to eight hours without
being served.
He bemoaned alleged poor planning by Zinara which had failed to foresee
problems of phasing out old discs before putting in place proper and
effective mechanisms to help in the change over to the new system.
Sibanda said he had tried and failed to get the new discs at Causeway and
Newlands post offices due to long queues and chaotic scenes.
“Considering the number of motorists that want to get the new discs and the
few designated points available, Zinara is doing a disservice to the
people,” he said.
Other motorists also complained that there were only two tellers serving
hundreds of people in a process which was slow and labourious.
The elderly, sick and disabled also complained that they were not being
given first preference as they queued along with able bodied motorists.
Journalist Ropafadzo Mapimhidze, who is diabetic, said she had to skip meals
in order to keep her place in a queue.
“Right now, I am still trying to recover from the ordeal,” she said. “I
suffered a great deal just to register my vehicle and no special care was
given to me as I suffer from a chronic condition.”
Mapimhidze said she was only served after six hours when a “kind gentleman”
sacrificed his spot in the queue.
Post offices such as the one in Borrowdale last week had only two tellers
serving over 300 people at a “snail’s pace”.
Zinara corporate communications executive, Augustine Moyo, attributed the
chaotic scenes to Zimpost, which he said should have been prepared for the
new system.
“I won’t speak for Zimpost, but I think they should have been ready enough
for the computerisation process,” he said. “Another challenge is that the
selected points are located in residential areas and as a result rampant
power cuts have stalled the exercise in areas such as Waterfalls and
Newlands.”
Zinara has since bought generators to speed up the exercise. The
administration phased out the old vehicle registration disc that has now
been replaced by an improved licence disc with enhanced security features.
Zinara claims it was losing millions of dollars in potential revenue
annually to a well-connected syndicate of people who were producing fake
discs.
The body has so far registered 350 000 out of an estimated 800 000 vehicles
in the country.