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George Maponga
Masvingo Bureau
The District Development Fund (DDF) is rehabilitating Buffalo Range International Airport in Chiredzi to improve the state of the runway as Government continues to give priority to infrastructural development to stimulate economic growth in line with Vision 2030.
Rehabilitation of the airport’s runway comes as the nation anticipates a recovery in the country’s tourism industry as the world wriggles out of the Covid-19 pandemic that spawned closure of borders and limit in air travel.
Government is expanding local commercial airports to facilitate trade and tourism and Buffalo Range is one of them.
The airport is the gateway to the Lowveld which has vast tourism potential while the sugar industry will also benefit from improved access to air travel.
Permanent Secretary for DDF in the Office of the President and Cabinet Mr Christopher Shumba, who toured Buffalo Range to assess progress, expressed satisfaction.
Mr Shumba said work on the initial phase of rehabilitating the airport’s runway will be completed this month.
“We are doing rehabilitation of the runway, working on the runway and by 15 October we should start the actual resurfacing and this project is being done after we received funding from the Government,” he said.
The rehabilitation exercise entails working on the runway shoulders and attending to cracks. Taxiways at the airport will also be attended.
The runway straddles nearly 1 600 metres.
DDF’s rehabilitation work is expected to pave way for more aircraft to ply the Buffalo Range route.
Besides private wildlife sanctuaries in the south-eastern Lowveld, the airport is also a window for tourists to the world-acclaimed Gonarezhou National Park.
Gonarezhou is also part of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, which is arguably the largest wildlife habitat in the world in terms of size and flora and fauna diversity.
The transfrontier park joins together Gonarezhou with South Africa’s famous Kruger National Park and Mozambique’s Limpopo National Park.
Mozambique and South Africa, like Zimbabwe, have also been busy upgrading tourism facilities in their sides of the park to create a wonderful experience for tourists.
President Mnangagwa’s administration has identified tourism as one of the low hanging fruits with potential to accrue quick win benefits for the national economy as Zimbabwe strives for upper middle income economy status by 2030.
Online Reporter