July Moyo blasts councils

By Blessings Mashaya

Local Government minister July Moyo has slammed councils, accusing them of misappropriating road levies they received from Zimbabwe National Road Administration (Zinara) by diverting the funds to paying salaries.

He told Senators on Thursday: “Government created a levy after noticing that anybody who travels on these roads is destroying the roads. Hence, there are two forms of collecting funds.

“The first one is the licence fees which are collected by Zinara and these funds are rechannelled to these local authorities.

“The second levy, which is collected by the State, is that whenever motorists pay for fuel, there is a tax levy in that which is given to these authorities and the funds is given to the ministry of Roads and also local authorities in both urban and rural areas.

“These are referred to as road authorities and they benefit from this levy. We have realised that most of our local authorities, when they have received these levies from the State, instead of maintaining the infrastructure, they have been using these levies to pay salaries,” he said.

“We have noticed that all the 92 local authorities, both urban and rural, we have been empowering them on how they can collect levy and also how they can maintain and refurbish these roads.”

Rural and urban councils, along with the District Development Fund (DDF) and the Department of Roads receive funds from Zinara on a quarterly basis for the rehabilitation and maintenance of roads under their jurisdiction.

Moyo added that local authorities are also abusing money they collect from rates. Daily News