Zupco Under Scrutiny As Auditor-General Flags Missing Buses and Accountability Gaps

A recent Value-for-Money Audit has cast a long shadow over the Zimbabwe United Passenger Company (Zupco), revealing significant discrepancies in its bus fleet records and raising serious questions about accountability within the government’s flagship public transport initiative.

The audit, obtained by the Zimbabwe Independent, highlights Zupco’s inability to fully account for numerous buses leased from the Central Mechanical Equipment Department (CMED) and underscores a critical failure to acquire new vehicles since the leasing program commenced in 2019.

The comprehensive audit, spearheaded by then Acting Auditor-General Rheah Kujinga (succeeded by Vimbai Chikwenhere), meticulously examined Zupco’s management of buses under the Urban Mass Transport System from 2019 through October 2024. Its findings challenge the very premise of the leasing arrangement, which was ostensibly designed to help Zupco rejuvenate its own fleet.

“My audit noted that there were no new buses acquired by Zupco from the period it started leasing buses from CMED (Pvt) Ltd,” Kujinga stated in her report. This observation directly contradicts Zupco’s own strategic plans for 2021-2023 and 2024-2025, which explicitly projected fleet expansion.

Prior to the leasing agreement, Zupco operated a modest fleet of 100 buses. The company informed auditors that it had leased 432 buses from CMED under a four-year contract. However, a review of consolidated records from Zupco’s depots presented a starkly different picture, indicating only 390 leased buses. This unexplained variance of 42 buses has prompted the Auditor-General to question the fundamental accuracy and reliability of Zupco’s fleet management records.

Further compounding the concerns, the audit revealed that 17 leased buses were written off due to accidents between 2019 and October 30, 2024. While Zupco did manage to refurbish 12 buses from its aging fleet between 2019 and 2023, increasing its operational company-owned fleet to 112, no further refurbishments were undertaken during the first ten months of 2024.

In its official response, Zupco disputed some of the audit’s conclusions, asserting that all 432 buses had indeed been commissioned under the CMED lease. Management claimed that the discrepancy arose from an omission of 21 buses from the depot schedules, which they stated had been deployed to other government institutions as part of “corporate social responsibility” initiatives. However, Kujinga found this explanation unsatisfactory, noting that “the records at the depots only indicated 390 buses on their schedules at the time of audit, excluding the 21 buses sent for corporate social responsibility in government institutions.”

The audit report leaves a trail of unanswered questions regarding the whereabouts and operational status of a significant portion of Zupco’s leased fleet. This comes at a critical juncture when Zimbabwean commuters continue to grapple with severe transport shortages, and Zupco itself faces mounting operational challenges, including a substantial number of buses grounded for repairs.

The report further highlights that Zupco failed to capitalize on the leasing opportunity to expand its own fleet, attributing this failure to unmet revenue targets and significant cash flow challenges stemming from ineffective debt collection. Additionally, the audit pointed to a lack of full implementation of a vehicle tracking system and identified several violations of the CMED lease contract by Zupco.

Revenue targets for the audit period (January 2019 to October 30, 2024) were consistently missed. On average, buses achieved only 76% of their revenue targets, with a peak of 86% in 2020 and a low of 71% in 2019. Alarmingly, from January to October 2024, revenue target attainment plummeted to 54%. The audit also criticized Zupco for its inconsistent approach to setting revenue targets across depots, citing instances where no targets were set for certain months and similar targets were applied indiscriminately to buses operating on urban, peri-urban, rural, and intercity routes. This lack of precise target setting, the report concluded, hinders effective performance monitoring.

For instance, in August 2022, all buses at the Belvedere depot were assigned a uniform revenue target of ZWL$18,000, equivalent to approximately US$36 at the prevailing exchange rate. Such generalized targets, the Auditor-General implied, fail to account for the diverse operational realities and potential of different routes.

This audit serves as a stark reminder of the persistent challenges in public sector accountability and the urgent need for robust oversight to ensure that critical government programs deliver on their intended objectives.