-threaten to walk out over the matter
RUTENDO CHIRUME
MASVINGO-Masvingo City Councillors have raised concerns over the failure by Council management to move long distance commuter buses from the CBD to Mucheke Rank as they are now being portrayed as incompetent by the electorate.
Speaking during a full council meeting held on February 27 last week, councillors demanded for the statistics of offending buses since the operation to move the them from the CBD started since the situation appears not to be changing.
Masvingo Urban ward 10 councillor, Sengerai Manyanga was the first to raise the red flag and was seconded by ward 7 councillor Richard Musekiwa.
Councillors threatened to walk out of the full council meeting if there were no statistics released because the Mucheke Bus Terminus issue has been going on for long.
They also said those responsible for the relocation of buses back to Mucheke Rank fail to do their job, they should be asked to step aside.
“We have been in office for four and half years and we are left with very few months before our term of office ends. We have been here and making resolutions after resolutions to move all buses in town to Mucheke rank, but not even a single bus has been moved, are we here play games or what?
“How do we go back to the residents to campaign when we are failing to do a simple task like this, they will take us for fools and jokers.
“There are a lot of illegal pick up and drop off points in town but since the operation started I am told that only 7 buses are being nabbed per week which means one bus per day. Where is the challenge, if those responsible are not able to do their jobs, why can’t we fire them. We want answers today and will not end this meeting until we get satisfactory answers, ” said a visibly angry Cllr Manyanga.
“We are spending more than we should on this operation rather it should be vice versa. We have enough reinforcements to do this job, municipality police, our cars are always on the road for this operation, even the ZRP is also involved in this operation but it is surprising to hear that since operation started only 14 buses were fined on illegal pick up points but if you go to at Croco Motors every day there are so many buses picking or dropping passengers, what are we doing. We are the only town without a functioning public transport rank yet we want to be a metropolitan city, we are a big joke,” weighed in Cllr Musekiwa.
Phase one of the operation started on February 5 to 11 this year where seven buses and 14 vehicles were clamped with a total of US$450 collected, on the second phase from February 12 to 18 seven buses were fined raising US$280 and the final one which ended last week raised US$120.
