THE Zimbabwe United Passengers Company (Zupco) plans to dispose of its disused fleet whch is lying idle at depots countrywide that have been turned into scrape yards.
The company has been disintegrating over the years, leaving it with a depleted bus fleet for rural and urban operations.
Its depots have been turned into scrap yards with a disused fleet, some dumped several years ago.
Critics say Zupco collapsed as an efficient urban transport company largely because of mismanagement and corruption.
Zupco acting chief executive officer, George Chigora, who was thrust at the helm of the loss making parastatal in June said his team wants to clear the disused fleet at depots countrywide.
‘‘It is true that some of our depots were named graveyards because of old bus shells that made it an eyesore,” he said.
“There were very old buses including scrapes that were being kept for no apparent reason at all, and we need to get rid of these.
Chigora said a disposal committee has already been set up.
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“These include workers from workshops, engineering, management, information technology and finance,” he said.
“This was done according to the Act that I constituted and advised the Procurement Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (PRAZ) accordingly.”
Chigora said the parastatal was sitting on scrap metal worth several thousands of dollars.
‘‘The committee will be going to every depot recording all such disused equipment, it could be oil, tyres, bus shells and all spare parts,” he said.
“We need to dispose of those useless equipment so that we can earn income to buy anything or service our buses that are on the road.”
Zupco is one of the loss-making government assets that have been placed under Mutapa Investment Fund.
MIF chief executive officer John Mangudya last week confirmed that they are working towards restoring the public transporter to its former glory days.
He recently said MIF had tabled plans to revive Zupco as well as the National Railways of Zimbabwe through a hybrid approach which relies on internally generated resources and self-liquidating debt options.
Once revered as a regional transportation powerhouse, Zupco has suffered major setbacks over the years due to neglect of maintenance, lacking spare parts, and overdue replacement of equipment.
Zupco used to dominate most of the country’s routes before plummeting to current levels of decline.
Former auditor general Mildred Chiri in her report said the government pumped up to ZWL$1,2 billion to subsidise the Zimbabwe United Zupco in 2020 alone without any supporting documents.
Chiri said that figure was too conservative.
