Story by Wellington Makonese
THE production of vehicle number plates at the University of Zimbabwe is in full swing as the Heritage-based Education 5.0 Model continues to generate solutions to the country’s challenges.
The National Transtech Solutions, an establishment of a consortium of eight tertiary institution vehicle number plate production plants is fully operational, thereby eradicating imports of the once scarce product.
Around 60 000 plates of various configurations have been distributed to the Central Vehicle Registry (CVR) with the plant having the capacity to feed the southern African region.
“We do the regular plates, public service motorcycles, personalised plates, we have quite a large range, potentially we can do 2 000 plates per day as we have a technical team to operate,” said the coordinator at National Transtech Solutions, Professor Hodgson Makurira.
The facility is testimony to the success of the Heritage-Based Education 5.0 Model in pushing the industrialisation agenda.
“The capacity of the plant is more than what the country requires, we are producing at around 40 percent of the capacity to fill our needs so we can support two to three more regional countries. This has allowed our people to learn how to set up factories and at the same time learn and serve the needs of the people,” said the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, innovation Science and Technology Development, Professor Fanuel Tagwira.
The Vehicle Number Plate Production plant was commissioned by President Emmerson Mnangagwa on the first of December last year as a fulfilment of his vision to spur industrialisation through innovation hubs and industrial parks at institutions of higher learning.
