The Zimbabwe National Road Administration used to be a by-word for inefficiency and corruption, with only a small fraction of the vehicle licence fees and road tolls actually going to roadworks, most being assigned to "administration" and Zinara going further in awarding contracts to dubious companies connected to managers.
Now Zinara is a model parastatal, with its first ever clean audit report from the Auditor General, efficient collection of the licences and tolls, very modest administration percentages, and regular sums of money being passed to the road authorities, that is the Government itself and the 92 local authorities.
The signs of a better Zinara were already apparent, since the parastatal has to provide the funding for the major roadworks in progress over recent years so it was obvious that the Second Republic reforms were working.
Zinara used to hit the headlines as top managers were taken away in handcuffs to face trial over corruption charges, or at least were just let go for inefficiency. It now gets headlines for its regular reports of how much money has been channelled to the road authorities to build and maintain roads as among reforms was also a determination to tell all those vehicle owners where their licence money was going and to tell those driving on the highways what the toll money was being spent on.
Zinara has also been demanding high-end accounting from those same road authorities who get so much of the money. They have to account for every cent of what they received in their last tranche from Zinara before they get the next one, and Zinara likes to see clean accounts and proper procedures being followed.
President Mnangagwa, when the Second Republic Government took office, put a clean-up of Zinara high on the priority list, not just as part of his major programme to have a clean administration but to ensure the very large sums paid by road users were made available to rebuild, maintain and extend the road network that those same users were paying for.
Infrastructure is not cheap and it costs a lot of money to make and maintain decent roads, especially with the lack of maintenance in the years before the major reforms of Zinara. Decent roads were a top level Government programme as the Second Republic took office, and that meant Zinara had to be cleaned up properly, rapidly and permanently and then transformed into an efficiently run organisation with costs controlled, so that the maximum possible was transferred to those building and maintaining roads.
Zinara is not supposed to do any of the road works itself. Basically it is a revenue agency, a specialist tax collector and its diversions into roadwork contracts in the past simply opened doors for corruption to add to the corruption in the collection of licences and tolls and the corruption in the spending of money on a high life for managerial staff.
The inefficiency added to the waste, toll gates built in the wrong places and quite often built to standards not really fit for the process without proper facilities for the staff who were needed to be based along the highways and in rural areas. Modern electronic systems were not used, and even the licence system and its agents were open to abuse without a proper database listing all licensed vehicles.
Basically a lot of money that was supposed to be collected was not being collected, or at least if collected was not being transferred to Zinara accounts, and a lot of what was being collected was being poorly spent.
So the new board and management brought in had a lot to sort out, with the parent Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure Development backing those efforts fully, but also making it clear that the efforts needed to be successful.
The early stages had to see a whole new culture created, as well as some essential administration infrastructure put in place which helped to incentivise staff and allow future costs to be reduced. But this was done and that new culture of being both efficient and effective created a reasonably professional staff who started taking a pride in their work, and Zinara needs a lot of non-managerial staff manning desks and toll booths, so staff morale is important.
The annual audit reports were getting better, but with the Auditor General offering advice and demanding certain changes. That is the duty of an auditor. But the board and management took those comments seriously and after their major clean-up were still active on polishing the administration so it would be approved by a demanding auditor. The result is a clean report.
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Obviously, as a pleased Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister Felix Mhona noted at the eight annual meeting this week, Zinara needs to maintain this clean sheet. In one sense it is an achievement, considering the past, but in general terms any organisation should be able to sail through a tough audit, year after year as a matter of routine.
But we are reasonably sure that Zinara, considering the progress it has made in the last six years as it hoisted itself from the swamp to become a model parastatal, will continue to produce, and will continue looking for ways to improve its performance further.
But still the board and management should be passing on the compliments passed at the annual meeting to all staff, for part of the success was motivating all those people manning desks and toll booths to do their work well.
Parastatals are often criticised, so it is pleasant when one gets compliments and even praise, along with the pressure to keep up the good work and do even better. Other parastatals should note that cleaning up is not impossible, just requiring a clear vision, good management, hard work and a motivated staff.
