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Midlands Bureau

The Midlands Province requires about $40 million for the completion of road rehabilitation works that kicked off last year, an official has said.

The Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development embarked on a massive road construction projects last year which targeted a number of roads in the Midlands province as well as other provinces.

Midlands province received $19 million for the roads rehabilitation programme that targeted Mberengwa-West Nicholson, Mberengwa- Mataga, Kwekwe-Nkayi as well as Gokwe-Siyabhuwa road among others.

In an interview, Provincial Roads Engineer, Denis Mapfurira said while significant strides have been made in the first two projects, work has stalled in the Kwekwe-Nkayi and Gokwe-Siyabhuwa project with surfacing still to be done almost a year down the line owing to shortage of resources.

He said work has stalled after the money that was allocated had been eroded by inflation adding that more funding was needed for the completion of the projects.

“The funding we received from government last year has since been overtaken by events. Prices and rates have since gone up and that has resulted in some of our projects failing to be completed. We are yet to surface the two projects, but once we get more funding I assure you that we can complete the projects in no time,” said Eng. Mapfurira.

He said while some projects were completed, there were some that were yet to be completed as they last received allocations last year.

“We received a total of $7 million for the Kwekwe-Nkayi project which has since been stalled by the lack of funding. We are now failing to complete the project because the money that we received last year is no longer enough to complete the project.

“As for the Gokwe project, we last received an allocation last year in March. We are therefore hoping that in the supplementary budget we will be able to get an allocation so that we complete the projects,” he said.

He said the province needed about $40 million, for the stalled projects to be completed.

“We last carried out road maintenance a long time ago. We are therefore hoping that if we get some allocation, we will be in a position to resume road maintenance before the rains,” he said.