Government suspends urban tollgates project

Government has temporarily shelved its controversial plan to introduce toll gates within cities.

Government is now prioritising rehabilitation of major highways, including construction of state-of-art toll plazas and revamping existing urban and rural roads.

While Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Development, Dr Joram Gumbo could not shed much on the suspension of the urban tollgate programme, he said Government was concentrating on revamping the country's road network.

"At the moment, there are other issues that we are prioritizing and we have not been focusing much on that issue (introducing toll gates in urban areas) and we are not talking about it at the moment," he said.

 "Urban tollgates are not a priority at the moment as we are focusing on other issues such as dualisation of major roads and construction of the recently introduced tollgates in highways," said a source.

"There are 10 more tollgates that will be added soon (on major highways) but there will be no urban tollgates.

"One also has to appreciate that urban tolling is a very sensitive issue. Imagine erecting a tollgate between the CBD and Glen Norah, there will be an outcry, it has to be handled with care."

Last year, Government indicated that it was going to introduce 30 more tollgates, with some of them in urban areas.

To date, 10 tollgates have been approved with implementation already underway.