Maravi

Mpongwe residents confront RDA officials over shoddy works

Mpongwe residents confront RDA officials over shoddy works
By Moses Kuwema in Mpongwe
Tue 13 July 2010, 15:20 CAT

SOME Mpongwe residents on Monday took to task officials from the Road Development Agency (RDA) over the poor workmanship on the Luansobe-Mpongwe road.

During the inspection of the road by RDA officials, the residents expressed disappointment at the quality of the road, saying it was sub-standard. “It’s not fair for these people to be taxing us from the K100,000 that we get… to construct this road which is of poor quality.

Muletugong’a ama jeans no musebo nao mutugong’e? (You’ve cheated us on jeans; do you want to cheat us on the quality of the road as well!) You people need to listen to us.

This road has not been completed yet but already it has started developing potholes. We want something permanent; not this which is temporary,” one of the residents was heard shouting.

The residents said it would have been better for the RDA to have just put up a gravel road instead of a tarmac, which they described as a mockery.

But RDA principal engineer for construction, Richard Kasongo, who had a tough time trying to explain to the uncompromising residents, advised them to appreciate what the government had done for them because other areas did not even have the same tarmac they were unhappy with.

Kasongo said before a road is constructed, the RDA looks at the flow of traffic in a particular area.

“When making roads, we look at the flow of traffic first; this road is not as busy as the Kapiri-Ndola road. It’s different, so when the traffic improves on this road we shall add another layer to accommodate the traffic,” he said.

Kasongo said the contractor would not leave the site until after 12 months.

He said there was need for the residents to allow the bitumen to evaporate, after which the road would be intact.

The contract sum for the road is K90 billion and China Henan International Corporation are the contractors working on the road where 90 per cent of the work has been done.

And RDA regional engineer for Copperbelt Province Thomas Zimba has bemoaned the lack of adequate funding from the government to finance road programmes in the region.

Speaking on Monday, Zimba said there was a backlog of roads which were in dire need of maintenance and the face of that could only change when a lot of resources were pumped into the road sub-sector.

Zimba said the region also required more technicians to undertake works for road condition surveys under the proper development of the highway management and the bridge management system.

And Zimba disclosed that the agency was carrying out maintenance works on the Kafulafuta-Luanshya road, which included pothole patching and reconstruction of some failed sections.

He said 40 kilometres of the road had been done so far, and only a stretch of 2.5 kilometres was remaining for reconstruction.

“Equipment from the office of the permanent secretary on the Copperbelt Province under the Rural Road Unit was provided so that these works can be accomplished. So far, 40 kilometres of pothole patching has been done. The main works being undertaken now is the reconstruction of the first 1 kilometre which is in progress,” he said.

Zimba said K1.5 billion was given for the road and so far K500 million had been used while the remaining K1 billion would be used for reconstruction.

Recently, the Auditor-General queried RDA for delaying in commencement of road works in some parts of the country even after the government had paid colossal sums of money.

In May this year, key donors to the road sector, including the EU, maintained their withholding of support to the sector after revelations about RDA’s imprudent management of funds.

The Auditor General’s report revealed that RDA overcommitted the government by over K1 trillion through over-procurement of contracts in the 2008 annual work plan and at the same time, the audit report revealed that about K19.1 billion imprest had not been retired by RDA since 2004.

According to the Auditor-General’s report, more than K14 billion for instance was paid for some roads in Lusaka Province but the RDA had not commenced work.
The RDA has also been questioned over some various cases where contractors were being overpaid for some work done contrary to the initial agreements.

The report raised several other concerns on how the road sector funds were being managed in Zambia.

Labels: MPONGWE, RDA, ROADS

posted by MrK @ 10:57 PM