The switch over in the last few months from payment by banknote to payment by plastic has brought many benefits, as Minister of Finance and Economic Development Patrick Chinamasa told Parliament last week. With large parts of the formal economy on plastic and some of the major gaps now being filled as banks issue more machines, the largest single entity still demanding banknotes are Government departments and quasi-Government units, as Minister Chinamasa admitted.
But he is having something done about this and point-of-sale machines are now being installed in Government offices. The minister will need a priority system and probably one that gives the maximum benefits to the public as quickly as possible.
Three units stand out. Passport offices need these POS machines quickly. When a whole family goes in to renew passports, some fairly large sums are needed. Zinara needs these machines in its licensing offices at least and needs to upgrade toll gates so that some sort of plastic can be used there, even if this is just an in-house card charged up at a Zinara office.
And of course Zimra must be fully plastic throughout its operations. Most people find paying taxes painful, but being forced to queue first for banknotes makes the process even worse and delays in transferring money to Zimra accounts at banks makes life difficult.
But there is a fourth unit that really needs a high priority for POS machines, the police traffic enforcement teams. The police have come in for a lot of criticism, some justified some not, over their traffic law enforcement roadblocks. Demanding banknotes and banking these in trouser pockets does not inspire confidence.
But if every roadblock and every mobile traffic team was equipped with a POS machine then the public perception of the police would rise rapidly. Almost all drivers have bank accounts and so have the plastic.
The advantages would be immense. All fines would have to be paid into a bank account automatically. And with the money in a bank account the Auditor-General could send someone to look at it.
Even if it was agreed that the Police could use traffic fines to fund essential requirements and services, the fact that the money was in a bank account would mean that proper procedures would have to be used to buy goods and services and that proper accounts, inspected regularly by the Auditor-General, would be kept.
Everything would be out in the open, totally transparent and free of suspicion. Ideally all purchases of uniforms, computers, spares, building maintenance supplies and the like would have to be from approved suppliers.
Most important everyone paying a fine would at least have the satisfaction that the money was being accounted for fully and that it was being put to good use. Switching to plastic would also allow police administrative staff and officers in charge to check that all roadblocks were approved, that policy over spacing and the like was being obeyed and that temptation by unsupervised teams was drastically reduced.
As the Government switches over to plastic, it will find, as many in business have discovered, that having a bank record as well as receipts and other paper trails makes checking of accounts a lot faster and easier and corruption largely a problem of the past.
So we hope Minister Chinamasa accelerates the Government’s switch to plastic, a switch he has rightly pressed the private sector to take.