Ishmael Mnkandla
BUSINESS people operating in and around Inyathi are in Bubi district have noted with concern that bad roads were forcing prices of commodities to be permanently high.
This, they said, was as a result of suppliers of various commodities who were shunning the route owing to the damaged roads.
Inyathi Business Association committee member Sydney Muyambi said they have since resorted to hiring transport to fetch commodities in Bulawayo and other areas beyond.
“The road is not good for our business. There are a lot of suppliers who would want to supply us, but they can’t because they have said their vehicles always have breakdowns along the way due to the bad road. So most of them have quit arguing that it was not making business sense.
“So what this means, prices can be lower if they supply us, but under this situation as long as we have to go and buy ourselves, we will factor in the issue of transport, the prices will always be high for us to break even,” Muyambi said.
He said Inyathi was not far from Bulawayo which means under normal circumstances prices should be the same.
On the Bulawayo Nkayi road, only a stretch of about 50km of the road has been widened and tarred over the years with the remainder of the road linking Turk Mine and the Inyathi area in Bubi District up to Nkayi Centre yet to be worked on.
The road project has taken too long to complete after it was started in 1993 and was supposed to be completed in 1999.
As a short term measure the Government has since August been doing maintenance and rehabilitation of Bulawayo-Nkayi Road through grading and pothole filling after it was damaged by heavy rains received in the last cropping season. The rehabilitation works are being done under the Emergency Roads Rehabilitation Programme (ERRP).
