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Staff Writer
The Zimbabwe National Road Administration is implementing a cocktail of measures aimed at rebranding the institution and ensure that the public understands its mandate as enshrined in the Roads Act.
After aligning its activities to its legislative mandate of fixing, collecting, and disbursing road user fees to road authorities, Zinara public relations and marketing manager Mr. Tendai Mugabe said the road fund manager had now embarked on a rebranding journey.
Mr Mugabe told Spiked Online Media that Zinara’s rebranding was not focusing on changing corporate colours and logos but changing the business culture at the institution.
As such, Mr. Mugabe said Zinara’s rebranding process was involving a complete overhaul of the institution’s operations starting from the culture of employees and managing public perception.
“I can confirm that our Board, with a clear directive from our parent Ministry, has successfully aligned Zinara to its core mandate,” said Mr Mugabe.
“We are now at a stage where we are focusing on rebranding Zinara to ensure that it reclaims its rightful corporate position.
“We have started with internal rebranding where we are undertaking various initiatives including customer care training for our staff members. Our efforts in this regard are biased towards customer-centricity knowing that we collect public funds.
“On a broader perspective, we are resourcing our IT department to ensure that human interaction is minimised in the handling of cash that we collect. This is important as we seek to address the perennial perception that there are some underhand dealings that happen at our collection centres.
“Recently there was a public outcry on the issue of congestion at the tollgates and this is something which is at the heart of our rebranding efforts. As a stop-gap measure, we have employed traffic marshals at all our busy tollgates to help direct traffic depending on one’s mode of payment during peak hours. However, the bigger plan is to introduce e-tolling and procurement processes for this service are currently underway.”
Mr. Mugabe said they were now publishing all the disbursements they do to road authorities at regular intervals.
He said such information was key to the public who pay toll fees as they would want to know how their money was being utilized.
“As part of our rebranding process, we resolved that it is imperative that we keep the public updated in terms of the disbursements that we do to the road authorities. This is one of the key characteristics of the new Zinara that we now have. We are a public institution, and we are accountable to the public and this is one way of showing our commitment towards serving the public.”
Mr. Mugabe said they had also opened communication channels on digital platforms to respond to public concerns timeously.
“In this digital era, we know that information is key, and we have opened Twitter and Facebook pages where we attend to queries from members of the public in real-time,” said Mr Mugabe.
“The public can also make use of the website to access vital information regarding our operations.”
He said the new Zinara board was keen to see utmost professionalism at the institution where all employees respect public funds.
