Bad state of roads
Bad state of roadsBy Gady Mwamba Museka, Mazabuka
Tuesday March 25, 2008 [03:00]
The first three days of last week, I visited, for the first time, Namwala district in Southern Province, using Choma-Namwala road. The road is bad and I am sure it has never been attended to for a long time! Good roads are a catalyst for development through opening up of areas and markets.
I was left wondering that despite the huge sums of money designated for the rehabilitation of roads in the country; most of our roads have remained in a terrible state. Urgent remedy is required! mere political rhetoric is not enough to get the roads to a useable state. One wonders why the government has not found any solution to the perpetual problem of road rehabilitation. Most roads have gone from bad to worse. The very many potholes and detours mean that vehicles keep breaking down so that on many of the country's roads, emergency mechanics have sprung up to assist stranded commuters, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Vehicle owners are in distress, as their vehicles are not used optimally and coupled with poorly planned or non-existent drainage, it even makes roads poorer. Additionally, there are many bridges without any warning signs and no handrails. Vehicles have been known to plunge into the rivers with grave consequences. The road to Namwala is so bad that vehicles using that road consistently retire to a mechanic's workshop at the end of every journey.
I also observed another problem; Zambian roads are not designed for expansion. As the volume of traffic increases, road construction should be seen to be keeping pace accordingly! The road network suffers from inadequate routine maintenance, neglect of periodic maintenance and absence of emergency maintenance in areas affected by floods and other natural calamities. This in turn shortens the lifespan of the roads, resulting in premature and costly road reconstruction, while poor surface increases the operating costs of vehicles and has significant effect on road safety. One of the dangers resulting from bad roads is the increase in the loss of lives through accidents and frequent attacks by armed robbers who capitalise on the bad road to pounce on their victims when they slow down to either avoid or pass bad portions.
After my mission in Namwala I went to Livingstone, the road from Zimba to Livingstone is also another area of concern which needs urgent attention.
What is very clear is that the contractors and their supervisors have done an inferior job of repairing the roads; the billions of kwacha spent on the roads in the past years bore little fruit. Worse still, little efforts have been made to find out what went wrong. For the above reason, one can suspect that contractors are awarded contracts they do not know anything about. So what they do is re-award the contracts to competent construction companies after taking their own commission.
Then, the companies that will finally do the contract will get their commission as well and in the end the money designated for the contract will not be enough to go for quality materials, hence forcing the contractors to go for sub-standard materials which would not last for two years after construction, depending on how busy the road is. Let us prioritise the repairs of roads throughout the country!!
Labels: ROADS
posted by MrK @ 7:29 AM
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