Rethink Used Car Import Ban

THE proposed ban of left-hand drive cars leaves me wondering if the Ministry of Transport is really in touch with what is on the ground.

Let's start with the basics.

Zimbabwe has been under crippling sanctions from the West for the past 11 years and banning of vehicles older than five years is tantamount to declaring further sanctions on its citizens.

Let's not take the country back to the colonial era where cars were only driven by the privileged few, especially our white brothers.

It is common knowledge that every ordinary citizen's dream, especially the younger generation, is to one day own a house and a car.

Banning imports over five years will definitely push the prices of vehicles out of the reach of the ordinary Zimbabwean.

Putting ownership of cars out of reach of the ordinary citizen is retrogressive.

When President Mugabe talks of empowerment of the indigenous person, he also means access to ownership of basic items like motor vehicles

For a country like Zimbabwe to ban used car imports defies all logic.

Owing to the crippling sanctions imposed by the West, our vehicle assembly plants have been functioning well below capacity.

Unlike South Africa, we do not have a viable car manufacturing industry that we need to protect.

Banks in this country are not advancing car purchase loans at a time when salaries of the patriotic civil servants remain depressed.

Do not forget that the Government is still the biggest employer despite Finance Minister Tendai Biti paying pathetic salaries, so I am talking of the majority here.

The story that imported vehicles are causing air pollution is a blatant inaccuracy because all vehicles assembled in Japan after 1990 have mandatory emission control mechanisms.

Japanese vehicles always come with small, fuel-injected engines that are fuel-efficient and to blame them for pollution is like blaming the Pope for polygamy.

Most Japanese vehicles may be more than five-years-old, but they are certainly low-mileage owing to the fact that the Japanese don't travel much because Japan is a small island and urbanites usually use public transport because of traffic congestion in their cities.

A 10-year-old Japanese car can have 50 000 kilometres on the clock and a three year old South African vehicle can have 250 000 kms on the clock because South Africa is a vast country where distance between cities can be in excess of a thousand kilometres.

In this case, why condemn the 10-year-old vehicle in favour of the three-year-old one?

It is more logical to ban vehicles that have exceeded a certain mileage, say 200 000km.

On the issue of carnage on the roads, a lot of factors come in. For example, all vehicles in South Africa are locally assembled and are fairly new because the people there have access to car loan schemes.

However, there is general serious road carnage owing to general overspeeding, drunken driving (especially during weekends) and in some cases driver fatigue.

If statistics here are checked with the Zimbabwe Republic Police Traffic Section, most accidents are mainly caused by human error, which is in most cases worsened by poor Zimbabwean roads. There is no recorded trend of imported vehicles being involved in accidents owing to poor mechanical condition.

If in doubt, the best option would be to ensure that the Vehicle Inspection Department inspects all imported vehicles at the port of entry to check for mechanical fitness other than imposing a blanket ban.

Why burn the whole house to kill two rats in the ceiling? In most cases, poor vehicle condition emanates from lack of care and maintenance by the owner, whether the car is imported or locally assembled.

Banning imports will also result in a situation where it is very difficult to replace vehicles and as a result we will have an aging fleet within the country. A good example is Cuba. Due to sanctions imposed on the country by Western powers, ordinary Cubans could not purchase new vehicles and today as we speak the average age of a car on Cuban roads is fifty years. At least Cuba's situation on motor vehicles is not their choice.

Ministry of Transport should also be wary of the fact that once after they impose this embargo on fellow Zimbabweans, cars will be scarce in this country and hence more marketable and expensive resulting in increase in car thefts, hijackings and smuggling of vehicles.

The syndicates involved will naturally become very sophisticated owing to the huge dividends involved, just like what happens with drug-traffickers in the western world. The excessively rich syndicates would then easily bribe our once dependable but grossly underpaid Vehicle Theft Squad Officers resulting in a hopeless situation like the one in South Africa where policemen allegedly simply laugh at you if you report a stolen vehicle. This will automatically push insurance premiums up and force the already cash-stricken motorists to resort to expensive technology like vehicle satellite -tracking, which was once not very necessary in this country.

Before we can talk of banning imported vehicles, why not start by making sure that our roads are navigable. Our highways are full of potholes, carriageway markings were last drawn years back and are now invisible, danger warning signs have been vandalised and removed with no replacements being made.

I have not talked about dualisation because its common knowledge that it requires millions of dollars but the above are manageable and achievable if prioritised.

Opting for newer cars now with poor our roads is like a wife who craves for new expensive furniture for a house with a badly leaking roof or no roof at all.

Vehicle imports are also a cash cow for Zimra and if only the newer cars are allowed it means that the volume of imports will be drastically reduced thus reducing the much-needed revenue.

You should also take cognisance of the fact that vehicles older than five years already pay a surcharge/surtax of 40 percent to Zimra whilst the newer ones do not pay.

Although the newer vehicles are more expensive to purchase and require more duty in absolute terms, on a dollar to dollar basis, the older vehicles pay more.

Thus banning the older vehicles is tantamount to killing the hen that lays the golden egg.

I hope my colleagues in Zimra management will see the light before meeting revenue targets becomes a headache.

The cheapest vehicle at Willowvale goes for around US$20 000.

This means that a civil servant who earns US$200 will need to save at least US$100 a month for eight years if he dreams of owning a vehicle.

Parliamentarians from across the political divide are demanding a new vehicle for every year they sit in the August House.

This means that by the end of one term a Parliamentarian will own five vehicles, the oldest being five-years-old.

This shows how dear a set of wheels is to mankind. Lets shelf the ban for now until the Western Bullies remove their ruinous sanctions.