Cabinet approves Bulawayo vehicle parking project

Nkosikhona Dibiti

Cabinet has approved a US2,2 million project for the City of Bulawayo vehicle parking management system.

Addressing the media after the cabinet meeting, Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Hon Monica Mutsvangwa said the two main objectives of the project are revenue generation and employment creation.

The project is a 30:70 Public Private Partnership between Bulawayo City Council and Tendy Three (Pvt) Ltd. The partnership will run for a period of 6 years.

“The project has capacity for 7 200 parking bays, creating employment opportunities for 450 people.” she added.

Some equipment worth US$700 000 has already been acquired for the project. The project will have an annual turnover of between US$1.1 million and US$1.8 million.

Speaking to Community Podium, Bulawayo Mayor Cllr Solomon Mguni said the project is a City of  Bulawayo project that was initiated and passed by Council.

Mguni further intimated that “…this is one of the projects that we believe will augment our revenue inflows and aid our infrastructure rehabilitation in terms of roads and street lighting.”

Mguni thanked the cabinet for the approval of the project and was quick to point out that Tendy Three (Pvt) Ltd  is a Bulawayo company.

“We are grateful to the Cabinet for the approval of one of the few interventions that Council is doing to ease the burden on ratepayers,” said Mguni.

However, Emmanuel Ndlovu, Coordinator and Program Manager of  Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association was skeptical as he told this publication that BPRA suspects that the company was created specifically for this tender.

“We did our investigations on this company early this year. The company offices are Fidelity Life Centre with just one computer. Two of the addresses they had given on their social media accounts were false,” added Ndlovu.

Dr Rodrick Fayayo, a local government expert said “We can only hope that due diligence was done. We pray this is  not another Egodini,” in reference to the much vaunted Egodini Mall project that incredibly came to a standstill after so much hype.

Reginald Shoko Economic analyst said Triple Ps(Public Private Partnerships) have been one of the best and efficient ways to fund infrastructure developments in any economy but asserted that this particular project’s success will depend on the skill set available from the implementing company.

” As we have seen in the recent past,we have had good ideas that have remained just that, good ideas. The implementation matrix will be very important,”  said Shoko.

According to cabinet, benefits of the vehicle parking management system are, among others, as follows:

i) Real-time vehicle detection and recording;

ii) Ability to guide motorists to available parking bays;

iii) Allowing effective and efficient workforce management;

iv) Convenience to the motoring public; and

v) Decongestion of urban roads.