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Dr Gumbo

Govt’s pothole intervention laudable

The rains, which pounded most parts of the country, including Harare and surrounding areas in the past several weeks, brought a smile to farmers and city authorities, as crops flourished and dams supplying the city overflowed.But they also brought a big problem to the capital — the pothole menace which rendered most roads impassable. We were taken aback when the City of Harare and the Zimbabwe National Roads Administration (Zinara) seemed to take the problem lightly by shifting responsibility on how to deal with this problem. City authorities decried the $1 million grant they got from Zinara for road maintenance as too little, leading to a deadlock.

This impasse meant that there was no immediate relief for motorists, who continued to incur expenses as their vehicles were being damaged by the potholes. That is why we most welcome Government’s intervention in the potholes saga yesterday, although we believe the reaction took a little too long to come.

Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister Joram Gumbo toured pothole-riddled roads after which he declared a “state of disaster”. That means Government and other stakeholders will now take the potholes so seriously that emergency measures have to be adopted to solve the problem.

We expect that more resources will now be directed towards repairing the roads. The Minister’s declaration of war against potholes after the tour, which he should have done weeks ago, is still welcome.

Driving in Harare and surrounding areas had become a nightmare for road users. Almost all roads are now riddled with potholes so big that cartoonists ended up joking by sketching people fishing in the middle of the road. This demonstrated how serious the problem had become.

We got more frightened in the last weeks when the potholes started to manifest right in the middle of the capital. The potholes exposed the poor workmanship that has characterised the construction and rehabilitation of our roads in recent years. This starts from the tendering process and the corruption which is often reported around such processes.

The Plumtree-Mutare Highway is an example. As soon as the rehabilitation of that road was completed, Government rapped the shoddy work done by Infralink, a joint venture between Zinara and Group Five of South Africa.

Speaking in Parliament then, Deputy Minister of Transport and Infrastructural Development Michael Madanha said the reason for the poor quality work was lack of supervision and poor workmanship.

This came as a shock to many Zimbabweans who could not imagine how work on a stretch of more than 800 kilometres could pass without being monitored by the authorities.

It is such laxity on the part of those responsible which results in the poor workmanship manifesting now through potholes on various roads. After Minister Gumbo’s intervention, we understand patching up of potholes is starting on the Harare-Chitungwiza Road, which has become almost impassable.

This is a road constructed well after independence, yet there are a number of roads built before it which are still intact, with no signs of potholes. It means we are not getting it right somewhere and we cannot continue as if everything is normal when we are forced to declare emergencies mainly because of poor workmanship.

The state of the roads clearly illustrates how service delivery has been compromised by some among us who are unscrupulous.

Having said that, we want to believe that repairing of the roads is not going to be localised and restricted to Harare as road infrastructure in general has been damaged throughout the country. Government must move with speed to give all areas the attention they deserve.

We also don’t want to give truant beneficiaries of inputs for Command Agriculture an excuse that they could not meet their targets because their crops were inaccessible due to damaged roads.