Corruption in road works

Corruption in road works
By Editor
Sun 23 May 2010, 04:00 CAT

IT is necessary to critically evaluate how international assistance to our road sector is being managed. It is also necessary to critically analyse the effectiveness, efficiency and orderliness of the utilisation of both the Zambian taxpayer’s funds and donor assistance to our road sector.

It requires little intelligence – if a little is all one has – to realise that things are not as they should be in the management and utilisation of funds allocated to our road sector. This is the sector where corruption, outright theft of public funds is at its highest.

All sorts of crooked elements are found in this sector. This is the sector that contributes the highest funding to the ruling party. It is a sector that is used to steal Zambian taxpayers’ money and funds contributed by donors. It is therefore not surprising that although every year billions, if not trillions, of kwacha are spent on our roads but very little improvement is seen.

Today the road to Chipata is in shambles although billions of kwacha have been spent to fix it. The road to Northern Province, after Serenje, is in a terrible state. Yet this is the road on which we transport our imports and exports to the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam. The road from Mpika to our inland port of Mpulungu is also in shambles.

The road from Serenje to Mansa is also not in the best condition and needs some serious works, especially near Samfya. The pedicle road that connects Mufulira to Luapula still remains a dangerous gravel road. The Chingola Solwezi Road is almost gone and needs extensive works. The Lusaka Mongu Road needs major repairs, especially between Kaoma and Mongu.

There’s no need to talk about the never-ending construction of the Zimba-Livingstone Road. Here we are not even talking about the many gravel and feeder roads that are in terrible conditions. But every year billions or trillions of kwacha are being spent on roads. The question arises: where is this money going?

The truth is this money is being stolen through corrupt contracts where those in power influence the awarding of road construction tenders to their friends who in turn, and in one way or another, share the proceeds with them. They fund their campaigns.

A close look at those involved in road construction in this country will reveal that they are well-connected to or are partners of those in power. This means that road works are overpriced and shoddy jobs are done without any possibility of remedial action.

It is therefore not surprising that the best roads in this country are those whose construction the donors themselves directly supervised. A good example of this is the Kapiri Mposhi-Serenje Road whose construction was directly funded and supervised by the Danes.

If this trend is not reversed, our road infrastructure will continue to deteriorate while individuals connected to those in power increasingly become richer. We therefore need to pay a lot of attention to the issues revealed by the Auditor General’s report on the audit of the Road Development Agency. We also need to pay special attention to the concerns raised by our cooperating partners on the way we are managing the resources made available to our road sector.

We should positively look at the decision by key donors to this sector to withhold funding until we put our house in order. We know that those in government, including Rupiah Banda himself, are not happy with this withholding of donor support to our road sector. They think the donors are trying to reduce their electoral chances in next year’s elections by denying them the opportunity to show some progress in the maintenance of roads.

It is true that Rupiah’s government had started a programme of showing how well they were doing in the construction and maintenance of roads. And they wanted to use this as a key factor in their campaign for re-election. The withholding of donor funds is therefore seen as derailing their campaign strategy.

But if they really wanted to show progress in this sector, they should have made sure that every kwacha spent in this sector was well-accounted for and was efficiently and effectively utilised. In that way they would have more to show without anyone being able to challenge their record.

But the problem is while they want to show progress in the maintenance and construction of roads, they are at the same time busy stealing and abusing the resources the Zambian people and the donors have provided for that purpose. They can’t take the money provided for roads and put it in their pockets and at the same time expect good roads to be constructed and maintained.

Their failure to maintain our roads in good state cannot be concealed because many Zambians today own automobiles and they drive on these roads; they bear the cost of bad roads through the excessive wear and tear to the motor vehicles. It is also a well-known fact that bad roads increase the cost of production, the cost of consumer goods and are a strain on the foreign exchange of our country because more and more spares, tyres, rims have to be imported.

We think Dr Derek Fee, the head of the European Delegation in Zambia, has aptly explained the consequences of all this: “the incidence of the shortcomings on the economy of Zambia cannot be overemphasised. As a direct consequence, the rural roads network remains in poor condition and the urban-rural divide keeps deepening. For a country with limited financial resources, with high levels of poverty, every effort should be made to use funds effectively so that investments result in quality and sustainable infrastructure. Furthermore, the transparent and efficient use of public and donor funds is essential to ensure value for money. The government and cooperating partners are held accountable by their respective taxpayers for the good use of the finances. Though cooperating partners are committed to the development of the country, including at a time when their own financial situation is particularly difficult, they expect assurances on the management of public finances so that the partnership can be in full confidence.”

But whereas the cooperating partners are accountable to their tax payers, our government is not and does not want to be accountable to any Zambian tax payer.

Those taxpayers who try to question what the government is doing with their money are harassed, intimidated and humiliated in all sorts of ways for simply trying to ensure that the taxes they pay are used in their best interests. To question what they are doing with your own money is a crime, is treason. This being the case what options are there for a Zambian taxpayer to demand accountability in the use of the taxes he pays?

As for the donors, we welcome their decision to withhold funding to our road sector until acceptable levels of accountability are attained. There’s need for them to continually evaluate how their assistance should be given and is utilised. We think that this assistance should be conditional so that it would be necessary to monitor how it squares up to the conditionalities. When you help some, a position is taken, and that position is taken on the basis of certain analysis of the effectiveness of that assistance. The assistance should be conditional; if not, we run the risk of it being turned into the opposite of what we want. International assistance offers us positive opportunities of a much more rapid development but it needs to be managed and accounted for in an efficient, effective and orderly manner.

But to achieve this, the present corrupt, inept, selfish, greedy and thieving leadership must be swept away and new leadership created. This requires leaders who see farther than their own pockets and narrow personal interests. We believe that with the cooperation of donors who want to see honesty and accountability in the governance of the country, some day the Zambian people will be able to construct that type of leadership and, one way or another, free themselves from the present opprobrious leadership.

We therefore make a clarion call to all the Zambian people to join our cooperating partners in demanding more and more accountability on the use of Zambian taxpayers’ and donor funds on public works. We also urge all Zambians to support the withholding of donor funding to the road sector until there are acceptable levels of accountability in the use of public funds. The nation has nothing to lose but all to gain from this withholding of donor funding to a wasteful and most corrupt sector of our economy. We have all to gain and nothing to lose from increased levels of accountability.