Govt gives condition on Pedicle Road funding

Govt gives condition on Pedicle Road funding
By Mwala Kalaluka in Chembe
Tuesday September 16, 2008 [04:00]

FINANCE minister Ng'andu Magande has said the Treasury will only disburse funds towards the tarring of the Pedicle Road on the basis of well-crafted financial agreements between Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) governments. And Magande noted that the completion of a K46-billion bridge across the Luapula River at Chembe was an indication of the country’s capacity to undertake development using locally sourced funds.

Meanwhile, the Committee of Ministers on the Chembe Bridge project has tentatively placed the commissioning of the project by the end of September.

Magande said in an interview in Chembe after touring the project site on Sunday that it will not be proper utilisation of resources if the tarring of the Pedicle Road between Mokambo and Chembe via the DRC is hinged on a loose bilateral agreement.

“The major issue even before we put up the road is who is going to be maintaining it?” Magande asked. “If we have a loose agreement and then something happens and the road is not maintained, that is not a very good way of utilising our resources.”

Magande, who described the proposal by the Congolese government that tollgates be set up on the road between Mokambo and Chembe to allow the Zambian government to recover the money it would spend on the project as progressive, said the road was an important one.

“The road is in DRC but 90 per cent of the traffic is from Zambia and that is why we are concerned,” he said. “It is a question of how we put the money before we have the agreement.”

Magande urged works and supply minister Kapembwa Simbao to engage in discussions with legal experts from the Ministry of Justice and craft a secured financing agreement with the DRC government over the road project since the Zambian government had already paid for the design on the road.

“Then we can start the work. We are in a hurry to develop,” he said.
And Magande said the near-completion status attained on the bridge project at Chembe was a historical achievement.

“Now, I can see it is happening. It is a great achievement and I want to thank everybody who has been involved,” he said. “Now, to the consultants, you have the knowledge and we want you to use it for making more bridges.”

Magande said it was only appropriate that the bridge be named after president Levy Patrick Mwanawasa and that it was a pity he was not alive to see it come to fruition.

“But that is what we have to do; development is not for ourselves but for posterity. I hope we do not have any more controversy about the naming of the bridge,” Magande said. “We have nobody to pay any single one ngwee, this is all from your resources and it shows our capacity that we can do things with our own money.”

Luapula Province minister Chrispin Musosha said there was no longer additional controversy on the naming of the structure after the late president.

“Colleagues from the press should not be calling this bridge, Chembe, it is now Mwanawasa Bridge,” Musosha said.

He was reinforcing Mansa Mayor Victor Shamende’s reiteration during a pre-tour meeting that the 320-metre structure would from then onwards be referred to as Dr Levy Patrick Mwanawasa Bridge.

Meanwhile, Simbao strongly insisted that the bridge should be commissioned by the end of this month saying this should be clear to all those involved in the undertaking after noticing that the date for the completion of the bridge had been shifted from August 28 to September 28 this year.

“You have shifted the completion from August 28 to September 28 without my knowledge as chairperson of the Committee of Ministers,” Simbao said. “We have to be informed at all times. I expected to see a completed project but you have varied the completion point without informing us. We are completely disengaged from these things and I do not know why you decided the completion without informing us...It has to be September, it can’t be anything and there is no way we can bend backwards. There is nothing else that we are going to accept.”

But RDA acting director Erasmus Chilundika, who apologised for not having informed the committee on the extension, said they would try at all costs to fit the remaining works into the proposed September deadline.

The contractor on the project has already placed lampposts and guardrails on the structure and all that is remaining is to connect power and complete the surfacing of the link roads.

The project was launched by late president Mwanawasa on September 17, 2006.