In an interview this week, the council’s chief executive officer, Mr Ronnie Sibanda, said the newly acquired equipment would help ease the burden on the cost of hiring equipment for routine road maintenance.
The 120K grader with a capacity of 145 horsepower was purchased from Barzem Engineering Company in Bulawayo.
“We have just acquired a motorised grader and this will certainly go a long way in addressing some of the major challenges that we have been facing in Gwanda District in terms of service delivery. In fact we used to hire equipment for road construction and maintenance work from other organisations and that was costly on our side,” he said.
Mr Sibanda said they hoped to generate more revenue and speed up service delivery through hiring out the grader.
“As council, we hope we will be able to maintain our roads most of which are in a bad state. We have since recruited a driver and he is currently receiving training from our suppliers.”
Several roads linking Gwanda town and the rural areas are in a poor state resulting in transport problems as some local public transport operators continue to shun the routes. The worst affected roads include the Gwanda-Maphisa and the one linking Gwanda with Manama and the Ntalale and Ntepe-Selonga roads.



