HWANGE Local Board (HLB) is well on course to meet its timelines for the resuscitation of road infrastructure in its area of jurisdiction under Government’s Emergency Road Rehabilitation Programme (ERRP).
HLB Town Engineer Philip Nguni said he was satisfied with the work being carried out under Government’s funded programme aimed at rehabilitating the country’s roads most of which were severely damaged due to excessive rains as of late last year to the beginning of this year.
“We are basically on course, the only problem is that people tend to think projects like these can be done overnight. If we continue with this pace by the time we get to the rainy season we would be done,” he said.
HLB was allocated ZWL$58 million under ERRP, which would be undertaken in three phases. The local authority was allocated ZWL$11 million for Phase I but has since received ZWL$ 2,2 million.
Phase I entails road side vegetation clearing, storm water drainage clearing and resuscitation and pothole filling. Phase II, which runs concurrently with Phase I involves road resealing with Phase III meant for reconstruction.
“The roads are ready for resealing. We started the project one and a half months ago but we have covered a lot ground. ERRP is a three-year programme we are still to do Phase II, which entails reseal thereafter we do reconstruction under Phase III,” said Eng Nguni.
A contractor engaged by the local authority, Enfund Construction is at an advanced stage of completing rehabilitation of a 1,2 kilometre (km) stretch at Chibondo medium density suburb.
“HLB has also engaged a contractor under ERRP (II). At the moment the contractor is doing pothole patching over a stretch of 1, 2 kms in Chibondo. The contractor is expected to reseal the same road,” said Eng Nguni
. The Government budgeted ZWL$33.6 billion for the second phase and Zimbabwe National Road Administration has already disbursed ZWL $2.3 billion as it intensifies efforts to rehabilitate the country’s road network. Under ERRP, the Government is targeting to rehabilitate 10 000 km of roads countrywide.
