Story by Tichaona Kurewa
THE rehabilitation of the Bulawayo-Victoria Falls Road is not only transforming a critical tourism and trade corridor but is also leaving behind lasting infrastructure for road maintenance and vital skills that will benefit communities long after construction is complete.
As rehabilitation works on the road progress, contractors say the project has been deliberately designed to create legacy facilities that will support long-term road maintenance and stimulate local development.
Some of the eight contractors working on the project confirm that the legacy infrastructure includes fully equipped road maintenance camps, boreholes and access roads, many of which are currently being used as detours.
“We are also going to leave a well-kept maintenance unit, well-developed houses and accommodation, which is going to be used by the Minister of Transport for the maintenance of this section of the road,” Masimba Construction’s Project Manager, Engineer Blessing Nhau noted.
Beyond physical infrastructure, the managing director of Linash Construction Mrs Elina Shoko says skills transfer is one of the major outcomes of the project, with local workers receiving training and being retained for other projects across the country.
“Every project that we work in, we make it a point to identify those who are quick to learn. Once the engineers identify them, we carry them with us, we take them over with us. They become a part of us. One of the operators comes from Matabeleland South, another from Mount Darwin. They learned from previous projects and displayed exceptional knowledge, and we took them with us.”
The impact is significant, with over 80 percent of the more than 800 workers employed on the project drawn from local communities in Matabeleland North Province.
The Bulawayo-Victoria Falls highway is a critical link within the North-South Corridor, connecting South Africa through the Beitbridge Border Post to Zambia via Victoria Falls and the Kazungula Border Posts.
So far, more than 30 kilometres of the road have been completed and opened to traffic.
