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By Hillary Munedzi
The Chartered Institute of Customer Relationship Management (CICRM) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Greater Harare Association of Commuter Omnibus Operators (GHACO) in a bid to strengthen the transport industry with emphasis on service excellence.
This comes at a time when the commuter omnibuses have been given a green light to operate by His Excellency, President ED Manangagwa, but the legal framework to operationalize the commuter omnibuses is yet to take effect and this has made the city of Harare to be a traffic jungle with the commuter omnibus operators always found on the wrong side of the law.
The Memorandum of understanding hopes to bring sanity and customer service that is in line with the Second Republic’s ambition of creating an upper-middle-income economy by 2030.
Speaking during the signing ceremony of the Memorandum of Understanding in Harare (CICRM) Executive Director Dr. Benjamin Katsvamutima said as an organization they are eager to create a better working relationship between the public, commuter omnibus operators, and the police.
“As CICRM we want to create better working conditions between the commuter omnibus operators and the police and you find some commuter omnibuses being barred from getting into the Central Business District. This has made Harare a traffic jungle since you find the police chasing the commuter omnibuses in the Central Business District.
“During the process, they will be endangering human life and as CICRM, we want to solve the transport jungle of Harare by training commuter omnibus operators with soft skills in customer relations. We will inculcate in them Ubuntu, business etiquette skills, customer handling skills culture, and behaviour change.
“There is going to be sanity between the police and commuter omnibus operators, so we want to create a better transport system and remove the traffic jungle,” said Dr. Katsvamutima.
With the digital age transforming the way of doing business, companies in Zimbabwe have been trailing behind in adopting the digital revolution and CIRCM is disrupting the transport system in Zimbabwe by creating innovative services for managing the commuter omnibus business.
“Working with Greater Harare Association of Commuter Omnibus Operators (GHACO), we have created advanced models of fleet management and as CIRCM, we will manage a call center on behalf of them and anyone can call us if one of our drivers is not performing to our standards and we will process the feedback and we will have a gauge on behaviour.
“We will also have an Uber type of business in Zimbabwe where you can hire your transport service via an application through your phone where you can geofence the nearest car.
“The model will create promptness, convenience, a world-class service delivery, guarantee safety, innovation, and just in-time service delivery,” he said.
Speaking during the signing ceremony GHACO chairman, Mr. Ngonidzashe Katsvairo said they left ZUPCO because they were failing to get their remuneration on time and this made service delivery to be compromised.
“His Excellency ED Mnangagwa said that commuter omnibuses can operate citing the challenges which were being faced by ZUPCO because it was failing to meet demand but the legal framework has not been acted upon. It has been three months down the line and as it stands, we are operating in a semi-legal way we have talked with the Harare Provincial Police officer so that we can have a working relationship with the police.
“We are working to make our operations legal and our fleet left ZUPCO because we were not getting paid on time. That compromised the safety of the passengers because our fleet was not getting service on time, but with this initiative, we hope to create conducive working conditions,” said Mr. Katsvairo.
GHACO has been operating in Zimbabwe since 2004 and they manage a fleet of 285 commuter omnibuses. They lamented the issue of touts that determine the price of commuter omnibuses in ranks.
“As Consumer Protection Commission, we will hit hard on the touts and we will inspect that there is sanity in Harare. We look forward to a unified branding system of the commuter omnibuses under GHACO so that we can easily identify which commuter omnibuses are breaking the law,” said Dr. Mthokosi Nkosi, the Chairman of the Consumer Protection Commission.