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Stephen Mpofu, Perspective

Tendy Three Investments Parking Solutions (TTI), a South African company contracted by the Bulawayo city council, is supposed to put order in the city by clamping wrongly vehicles parked in undesignated areas and fining their owners for the offence to bring order to the city.

Next TTI must ensure that no drivers of commuter omnibus, buses and m’shika-shikas park, drop or pick-up passengers at undesignated places. 

TTI is, according to the contract in place, supposed to give the City Council 30 percent of the money earned from its operations to be used for repairing roads in the city.

But sources close to the city claim that the contractual agreements in point above are not being met, although no official verification of the claim was possible before going to Press. What TTI has apparently succeeded in doing is driving cars away from the city centre, where owners must pay a dollar per hour for parking, to down street areas where no charges are levied. 

As a result some city centre businesses where people cannot afford paying a dollar an hour for parking their vehicles have reportedly retrenched employees because of low business. Now you (yes, you) must visit areas such as the Bulawayo City Hall centre parking along 8th avenue, 6th Avenue/Herbert Chitepo and Lobengula Street and the area opposite the Bulawayo Public library to see the chaos created by kombis and small m’shika-shika vehicles because there are no TTI marshals there to prevent the drivers from collecting and dropping passengers in those undesignated arrears.

Now country buses park, pick-up and drop off passengers along 4th avenue opposite Eveline High School instead of at the Renkini terminus, opposite Makokoba suburb. 

Where are the TTI marshals to stop the rampant chaos?

The Egodini Mall Project is commonly known to have failed to meet the great expectations of the Bulawayo City residents. The local authority entered into an Agreement with Terracotta Trading (Pvt) Ltd (TTPL) in 2015 to modernise Egodini by building the mall and providing a terminus for buses and kombis plying the Bulawayo city routes and also with space for vendors to trade at the same facility.

The project is at a standstill with apparently no one in public knowing who exactly should be blamed for the stalemate.

The City of Kings and Queens is known worldwide as Zimbabwe’s industrial hub, particularly in light of the annual International Trade Fair that Bulawayo hosts in April.

A new look Egodini, as intended under the TTPL — City Council modernisation project would certainly have given Bulawayo a post-modernity status that would no doubt attract more foreign direct investment.

*Rhodgers Hove also contributed to this article.