HARARE – Government is set to avail more buses and passenger trains beginning this Tuesday as part of a raft of measures to ease transport challenges that have affected movement around the capital over the past few days.
The past few days have been characterised by long queues at bus termini in Harare as intra and intercity movement was heightened by schools re-opening.
While applauding government for augmenting its fleet through bus imports, commuters called for more players to join the ZUPCO facility.
Qur plea is for provision of more buses so that we do not risk the not so safe Mushika shika.
We have been struggling over the past few days to access transport, our plea is for other players to be allowed into the ZUPCO facility to arrest our challenge.
Our wish is to see the buses coming one after the other probably at 30minutes intervals because the challenge is some of the drivers take their time off duty, said some commuters.
Speaking to ZBC News the Minister of Local Government Hon July Moyo said government has swiftly intervened through a partnership between state entities NRZ and ZUPCO which will see passenger trains and buses plying local routes in Harare and Bulawayo.
We have reached an agreement with ministry of transport to bring coaches from Bulawayo with locomotives, on one trip will be to carry about 3000 people, we have targets high density suburbs from Mabvuku, an announcement will be made through the ZUPCO and NRZ executives, he said.
Apart from the train arrangement, ZUPCO is expecting an additional 50 new buses this week.
We will be shuttling people from trains to places of residents and vice versa. As we speak our team is in Durban and 5 of them are on their way, he added.
At present, ZUPCO has a fleet of 262 buses and around 550 on franchise, with 667 more expected by the end of the year.
Government is on record calling on private players to register with ZUPCO as part of efforts to bring sanity to the transport sector which was riddled with indiscipline which was causing accidents through the use of un-roadworthy vehicles.
