FORTY percent of the 800 000 registered vehicle owners in the country are not paying for  Zimbabwe National Roads Administration (Zinara) licences, a development which is affecting road rehabilitation programmes.

In an interview at Zinara’s Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) stand yesterday, the road authourity’s director of operations, Mr Precious Murove, urged motorists to pay their licences to help fund road maintenance works.

“In the country, according to our database, we have about 800 000 vehicles and 60 percent of that figure are compliant with the law and 40 percent are non-compliant. This is a strategy to ensure that the motoring public are in compliance with the law,” said Mr Murove.

“The issue is to do with compliance, the revenue base that we collect as Zinara is not adequate to make sure that we complete maintenance and rehabilitation of our road infrastructure. More money is needed to be channelled for road rehabilitation and road maintenance.”

He said for the duration of the ZITF, which ends tomorrow, motorists would be exempted from paying Zinara penalties as a way of encouraging them to be up to date.