adminIt would also facilitate a skills transfer to the council’s road section as council staff would be attached to Group Five for the duration of the project.
Group Five has entered into an agreement with the local authority to reconstruct one and a half kilometre portions of Old Esigodini Road from Chelmsford Road towards Rio Hotel and Cecil Avenue from Coghlan Avenue to Gwanda Road.
The recycler tears up broken sections of a road, churns it into fine particles, mixes them with bitumen, compacts the road and applies a new surface at one go.
It would be the first time the machine is used in the country.
The version of the recycler being used by Group Five costs about R5 million.
It has a 1 200 litre fuel tank and uses about 80 litres of fuel per hour.
The Zimbabwe National Roads Administration (Zinara)’s engineer for the southern region, Engineer Moses Julius Juma, confirmed the development on Tuesday.
“The machine will be used to rehabilitate a total of three kilometres of road in the city before Easter. It is a marvelous invention that does all the work within hours.
“It eliminates the need for inconvenient detours as vehicles can be driven on the road as soon as the machine finishes,” said Eng Juma.
According to the latest council report, councillors unanimously approved the project.
“Group Five International Zimbabwe branch has been contracted by Zinara to rehabilitate the road from Plumtree Border Post to Forbes Border Post in Mutare. Group Five is requesting for a section of the road, say three kilometres that will be used as a trial section. This section need not be part of the MoT/Zinara that Group Five is
contracted to rehabilitate. This will be at no cost to the City of Bulawayo,” read the report.
However, council would be required to take over maintenance of the road once it is completed.
The report reads that the reconstruction would involve ripping, milling, stabilising and relaying the existing base of the road.
It is also indicated in the report that the final finish would be a tack and seal surfacing.
On recommending that councillors adopt the resolution to accept the Group Five offer, the director of housing and community services, Mr Isaiah Magagula, said the city needed all the assistance it could get on its roads.
“The gesture by Group Five International will go a long way in increasing the lifespan of the aforementioned roads,” said Mr Magagula.
A majority of the roads in the country have outlived their lifespan by more than 30 years as they were constructed in the 1950s.
The life span of a road is about 20 years.
Online Reporter