Staff Reporter

Transport and Infrastructure Development Minister Felix Mhona has lashed out at the Central Vehicle Registry (CVR) workers for having poor work ethic and gross corruption that was causing artificial shortages of number plates in the country.

Speaking after touring the CVR offices in Harare yesterday, Minister Mhona said he was concerned by the delays at CVR and vowed to deal decisively with all rogue elements within that institution.

“Today (yesterday) I visited the CVR offices to understand why people are failing to get number plates on time. As the Second Republic, we are saying we have enough plates in stock and no one should pay extra money to get them. I’m concerned that some motorists who applied for number plates last year are yet to receive them but some who applied recently already have the number plates. We are going to decisively deal with this issues,” said Minister Mhona.

Minister Mhona said that he was tasked by President Mnangagwa to address challenges at CVR with speed and he promised that things will soon normalise at that institution.

“The other purpose of the tour today was to find out what is the process flow, why are we having delays and what are the challenges but above all I want to thank His Excellency Cde Mnangagwa, the listening President. He said here are the concerns, address those concerns with speed and what we are doing here is to find out why are we having these queues, why are we having people saying we don’t have number plates after all you have witnessed yourself that we have got abundant number plates that are not collected and others are submitting papers and not being actioned,” said the Minister.

The Minister bemoaned rampant corruption at CVR and said that all corrupt officials are not worthy to be at that institution.

“The number one problem here is corruption, that’s what I can say. I have been appealing to the people to say if you can point those who are doing this. But you know these white collar crimes where there are two people involved, and it takes two to tango. At the end of the day, I was looking for those officials who are actually sending back motorists without their number plates, but the number one problem is corruption and work ethic which is quite poor,” said the Minister.

The Minister has since instructed CVR Registrar, Mr Saston Muzenda to weed out rogue elements from CVR so that the image of the institution is not corrupted by a few individuals.