Mat North Correspondent

…..as ZUPCO procures more buses

The Zimbabwe United Passenger Company (ZUPCO) will this month receive an additional 100 new buses procured from China to add to its ever growing fleet.

ZUPCO Acting Chief Executive Officer, Evaristo Madangwa told The Harare Post that the delivery was expected by mid-November.

“The new buses docked at the Durban Port in South Africa on 04 November and they will be arriving in the country at the shortest possible time for distribution to all the company’s depots,” Madangwa said.

Madangwa said Matabeleland North would be one of the provinces that would benefit from the new buses.

“Some of the buses will be coming to Matabeleland North province servicing both rural and urban routes. We want to compliment the Government’s road rehabilitation programming by servicing several feeder roads in the province,” he said.

He said the company was now servicing the Victoria Falls-Harare route.

“As part of efforts to expand our route network, we now have buses plying the Harare-Victoria Falls route and we will soon open other routes such as Victoria Falls-BeitBridge. The buses are coming and this will happen watch the space”.

ZUPCO requires 2 000 buses to run an efficient mass transport system and currently it is operating between 700 and 800 buses.

ZUPCO has procured a total of 1000 buses from China and Belarus and these have been coming into the country in batches of 50s and 100s in the past 12 months to boost the company’s fleet, which had deteriorated because of illegal sanctions, corruption and mismanagement.

When the New Dispensation came into power in November 2017, it committed itself to providing an efficient, reliable and affordable public transport system as the  country targets to become an Upper Middle Income Economy by 2030 (Vision 2030).