Police have impounded 44 unlicensed vehicles for failing to comply with the new Zimbabwe Road Administration Authority licensing system. The vehicles were impounded last week under an operation involving the police and Zinara aimed at ensuring that vehicles on Zimbabwe's roads were licenced.

Zinara head of administration and human resources Mr Precious Murove said the 44 vehicles were among 507 unlicenced vehicles that were caught at six road blocks mounted in and around Harare.

"We had an operation for four days and road blocks were mounted along Mt Darwin Road, Enterprise Road, Borrowdale Road, Simon Mazorodze Road and Seke Road.

"A total of 507 vehicles were found unlicensed and about 200 vehicles paid up their arrears at Zinara Head Office and 44 vehicles were impounded by police," he said.

Mr Murove noted that among the 507 vehicles caught during the process were some that belonged to Government and diplomats.

"We are still working out something as Government vehicles have white number plates and don't pay.

"We have since requested through the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure Development permanent secretary to inform Government departments to submit books for licensing.

"They are, however, allowed according to law to move around without licences," he said.

Mr Murove said 213 other drivers on the six road blocks disappeared before being arrested.

"On another note we are happy that the system enables the Traffic Safety Council to have correct data on all insurance companies that issue cover to motoring public.

"We hope this time around the Council will be able to get its 12-percent share from these insurance companies to ease up pressure from Zinara to fund traffic safety campaigns," he said.

He said a total of 368 000 vehicles have since complied with the new Zinara licensing system.

Mr Murove said they had discovered that most motorists were not complying with the new system because they had arrears dating back to 2009.

Others had no proper documentation for their vehicles such as registration books.

Mr Murove said more detecting vehicles would be bought and deployed out of Harare.

The recently acquired Mercedes Benz Vito is a super vehicle that contains electronic gadgets including a laptop directly connected to Zinara's national vehicle database and has four high definition digital video recorders that capture everything happening within the vicinity of a mounted road-block.

Zinara recently introduced the new licence disc with high security features to curb counterfeiting.