Maravi

Money allocated to road sector is inadequate, says Chilundika

Money allocated to road sector is inadequate, says Chilundika
By Chibaula Silwamba
Monday February 04, 2008 [03:00]

ROAD Development Agency (RDA) acting director Erasmus Chilundika has said the K1.2 trillion allocated to the road sector is inadequate. In an interview in Lusaka, Chilundika said when the government was allocating K1.2 trillion to the road sector, it did not take into consideration the adverse damage the heavy rains had caused to the road infrastructure this year.

“The provision in the annual work plan this year is about K1.2 trillion, we had started with a thought that we could use K2 trillion but the amount that we were given just amounted to K1.2 trillion,” Chilundika said. “With these rains, most of the gains we had made in improving the road network have been washed away. There is quite a lot of devastation in Southern, Central, Eastern, Western provinces, a number of culverts and even physical road infrastructure is being washed away.”

He said the huge investments in the mining, tourism and agriculture sectors require good road infrastructure.

“As you know we are implementing the Road Sector Investment Programme that requires a lot of money; US $1.6 billion (about K6 trillion) over a 10-year period. If we had that sort of investment in the road sector, we should be able to bring the total core road network of 40,000 kilometres into maintainable condition,” said Chilundika.

Labels: INFRASTRUCTURE, RDA, ROAD DEVELOPMENT AGENCY

posted by MrK @ 6:15 PM