Story by Josephine Mugiyo, Diplomatic Correspondent
THE Zimbabwe National Road Administration (ZINARA) has emphasised the need for quality workmanship as government steps up the road rehabilitation programme across the country.
This comes after more than ZiG90 million was disbursed for road works in the first quarter of the year.
Tasked with the mandate of collecting and distributing funds for road works, ZINARA says quality is of the essence in the ongoing road works across the country.
While the priority is on completing roads that lead to Mount Hampden, the venue for the SADC summit in August, other road works across the country are ongoing.
ZINARA Chief Executive Officer, Mr Nkosinathi Ncube says the target is to increase connectivity countrywide, hence the consistent disbursement of funds.
“We are disbursing funds to various road authorities across the country to make sure they meet their goals, so the road authorities we are working with obviously across the country, if we look at Harare the busy one is the department of roads when it comes to SADC as well though we see the disturbances being made we apologise for that. The SADC project has not taken funds from any other projects.”
“We hope by end of July the people of Harare will see the benefit of it all. But we’re not just focusing on Harare, outside Harare there are key projects that are taking place, the big one which will have a high impact is the Shurugwi Mhandamabwe road. We try to make sure all the roads are covered. In Matabeleland they are bridges that we are working with RIDA.”
Mr Ncube said over 700 000 litres of diesel have been disbursed for road works outside Harare, while an equivalent of US$60 million has also been channeled towards road works with emphasis is on quality workmanship.
“As ZINARA we worked with the ministers of energy and finance and we at least assist in the procurement of fuel for the road authorities.When our engineers are coming to the roads they come and look at the scope of work and if we’re not satisfied we don’t pay. There have been cases were the residents complaining of shoddy jobs and in those cases usually the engineers will have condemned the roads. So that’s why we do monitoring and evaluation because public funds have to be used properly,” he added.
Building modern road infrastructure is among priorities of the Second Republic as espoused by the National Development Strategy One.
