By Municipal Reporter-Harare City Council is set to close Roadport cross-border bus terminus on Fifth Street.

Harare Mayor Councillor Jacob Mafume said the city has not benefited from the deal it signed with the company running Roadport operations.

Roadport is built on part of Raylton Sports Club land leased from Harare City Council many years ago to provide sports and recreation facilities for club members who were almost all railway workers.
Apart from the Roadport deal, Clr Mafume said Harare City will also demolish tuckshops that were built at Raylton Sports Club as that was done against the terms of the lease agreement with the National Railways of Zimbabwe.
He made the disclosures when he appeared before Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee where he was responding to issues raised in the Auditor-General’s report for 2021.
“What is the update on the Roadport? The Roadport is another agreement that we are going to cancel. We have benefited absolutely nothing. When the Roadport was built, they forgot that it was the property of the City of Harare,” Clr Mafume said.
Roadport started operations in the late 1990s and serves travellers going to destinations in SADC and some parts of East Africa by bus.
On the issue of Raylton Sports Club, the mayor said council would demolish tuckshops built on a site next to Roadport.
“In fact, the whole Raylton Club, which we leased out to the NRZ, instead of building bullet trains, they are building tuckshops. We are going to demolish the tuckshops. We are going to demolish the structure that is there on account that we have not benefited anything as a city and the residents have not benefited anything,” he said.
Clr Mafume said in the city’s master plan, Roadport would be moved from the city centre to an area near the Mbudzi interchange to reduce congestion in the city centre.
Council is also looking at some of the past council’s contracts that were not benefiting residents.
“Some of these entities and contracts were done way before our time. They pre-date my council; they pre-date our council; and what we have been doing is to try and correct some of the issues through your assistance.
“Admittedly, some of the agreements are lopsided. They do not reflect the best interests of council and as far as they reflect that situation, we have endeavoured to terminate them or to renegotiate them.
“We have had challenges in re-negotiating in some instances and we have had challenges in re-engineering some of the entities, but we are making progress,” Clr Mafume said.
-State media