Toll gates for rural roads in Zimbabwe

By Andrew Kunambura

The cash-strapped Zimbabwe government will in the near future introduce more tollgates on the country’s roads despite the resistance from the motoring public.

The new tollgates will also target rural roads in addition to more highways that are now cash-cows for government, desperate for cash to fund President Robert Mugabe’s bloated administration. Since dollarisation in 2009, government has struggled to fund its operations.

In the absence of foreign aid, foreign investments and balance of payments support, government has been looking inwardly to increase its revenues. In the wake of a thinning industrial base, the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority has been unable to guarantee government a steady flow of cash to meet its competing needs.

As such, much of the expenditure has been going into consumption, neglecting the more crucial infrastructural development.

While there is serious consideration to tax the informal sector in order to widen the tax base, government wants to go for quick hits. Soon, motorists will be confronted with more tollgates.

Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister, Obert Mpofu, this week said nothing would stop government from introducing more tollgates, saying they badly needed the money to upgrade road infrastructure.

“We will put more tollgates where the ministry feels that they should be there. There is no going back on that. We are going to construct tollgates throughout the country, even in rural roads. We need more money to rehabilitate our roads. I don’t know why people are complaining so much about the issue.

“If you go to South Africa or China, you will find that people pay good money to use the roads but here if you introduce a dollar more, there is so much resistance that you risk being voted out of office,” said Mpofu.

“But people should come to terms with the reality that the era of cruising on the roads for free is past. If you travel along the Plumtree-Mutare road, you will appreciate why we need to be collecting more money because it has been rehabilitated using part of the tollgate money,” he added.

Government, Mpofu said, was finalising plans to expand the Beitbridge-Chirundu highway chiefly from proceeds from tollgates.

“I had a meeting with Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa last week and we agreed that we are going to work on that road on our own, if needs be, which means we need more money to work on the dualisation of that road which has claimed many lives through road traffic accidents,” he said.

Government is currently collecting US$36 million annually from the 22 tollgates currently on the highways; a figure it argues is not enough. Mpofu is not new to making controversial decisions.

Earlier this year, his ministry stirred a huge uproar after it hiked toll fees by 100 percent in some instances. The outcry largely fell on deaf ears thereby badly exposing the general populace that relies on public transport to higher bus fares. Civic organisations even approached the courts seeking to have the hike reversed but to no avail. Financial Gazette