Bad roads affecting grain movement

Mr Simon Muleya said they were appealing to Government and well-wishers to act on the matter urgently.
He said the bad state of the road has also exacerbated transport woes as many transporters were pulling out of major routes.

He said the villagers now relied on private motorists for transport that was very expensive.
The worst affected are those living at Tshikwalakwala, Makombe, Tshaswingo, Dite, Chabili, Shashe, Limpopo, Toporo, Masera, Zezani and Mpande. It costs an average 100 and 150 rand for a journey to any of these places by private transport and 40 rand by public transport.

“The situation here is very worrying we are appealing to Government and other players to come to our rescue.
“The villagers are suffering especially those staying in remote parts of the districts. We also have challenges in distributing grain to most parts of the district due to bad condition of the roads.
We are one of the districts that were severely affected by drought where many people need food assistance and their plight can only be resolved if we have state-of-the- art roads.

Some grain transporters are reluctant to go to other areas citing the inaccessibility of the road network.
“Plans have been in the pipeline for some time for the tarring of the road from Lutumba Business Centre to Tshikwalakwala, but nothing has been done due to the unavailability of funds.
“You will realise that most of these roads are not usable during the rainy season.

“These roads were badly damaged during the Cyclone Eline-induced rains and we have been struggling to repair them with the local authority.
“As the Rural District Development Committee (RDDC) we have been trying to repair the roads as most of them need to redone completely,” he said.

He said public transport operators have also pulled out all routes in the district citing the bad state of the road.
At the moment the whole district is being serviced by private motorists.

“There are a number of projects the Government is implementing in the districts and monitoring their progress is affected by the accessibility.
“We cannot effectively monitor these and hence the situation needs attention as a matter of urgency,” said the DA.

He said apart from the poor state of the roads they were also worried by lack of communication facilities in most parts of Beitbridge where people were now using mobile phone networks from South Africa and Botswana.

Mr Muleya called on the country’s major cellular network operators to consider the plight of the people living in the remote areas of Beitbridge.
“We are calling on Econet, NetOne and Telecel to consider setting up base stations in Shashe, Tshikwalakwala, Limpopo, Masera, Toporo and Swereki where there are completely no communication facilities.

“Previously in cases of emergency people in these areas relied on the police radio communication system, which has succumbed to wear and tear,” he said.