Chronicle Editor
Rutendo Nyeve, Sunday News Reporter
THE Emergency Road Rehabilitation Programme (ERRP) is set to be extended to December as part of the Government’s efforts to rehabilitate the country’s roads and improve trafficability.
The development is also expected to accelerate the rehabilitation of the country’s road network as a key economic enabler through the resuscitation of 50 road maintenance units in each of the ten provinces equipped with machinery.
More than 50 000 km of roads were rehabilitated while 2 000 structures were attended to since the start of the ERRP2 in 2022.
Deputy Minister of Transport and Infrastructural Development, Joshua Sacco confirmed the move to further extend ERRP 2, which ended in December last year, through the necessary legal framework.
“You might know that ERRP was put in place so that the Government would adopt all the roads for their maintenance because it was an emergency. ERRP time came to an end, so we are working on a Statutory Instrument that will extend the ERRP term up to December. For now, it is not yet in place but in the shortest period, I think it will be there,” said Dep Min Sacco.
The Deputy Minister said the Ministry was also re-introducing maintenance units across the country.
“We are already in the process of buying equipment to equip these maintenance units with trucks, water bowsers and other machinery so that we can deal with periodic maintenance on our major roads
“As a ministry, we want ultimately to do 50 maintenance units, which is five per province but due to budgetary constraints, we have started with 20 where a tender has been flighted to procure flatbed trucks, water bowsers and other equipment for these 20 maintenance units,” said Dep Min Sacco.
He said they are also in the process, with the Public Service Commission, of employing the relevant skilled staff that is required to man these 20 maintenance units and hope that once the equipment has been acquired, these maintenance units will start to function.
“Once these are now working, we will move to the second phase where we will work on capacitating another 30, bringing at least to five maintenance units per province. So, procurement is already underway for the equipment for these maintenance units,” said Dep Min Sacco.
Zimbabwe has an estimated road network of 84 000km, out of which 93 percent was in fair or poor condition and in need of rehabilitation or periodic maintenance.
The 2016-2017 rainfall season, which saw heavy rains induced by Cyclone Dineo left the country’s roads littered with potholes making driving a nightmare and increasing the rate of accidents while damaging vehicles, leading to a desperate need for a solution.
The Second republic reacted with speed and declared the country’s roads a State of Disaster, to facilitate the release of funds for maintenance and repair works.
The Emergency Road Rehabilitation Programme 1 (ERRP1) came into effect and sought to mend all the country’s roads and great progress was made.
Initially divided into three key phases intended to span over the course of 36 months, the programme focused on several tasks that ultimately resulted in a major improvement for all those who travel on Zimbabwe’s road network.
Under ERRP1, more than 26 000km of Zimbabwe’s road network was repaired, with 840km of roads across the country being reconstructed.
A total of 8 340km was re-gravelled, with 17 093km re-graded.
The programme was succeeded by the ERRP 2 which ended in December last year.— @nyeve14
Bongani Ndlovu