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Oliver Kazunga, Senior Business Reporter
THE Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Transport and Infrastructural Development has written to the Government seeking an explanation regarding delays in the commissioning of the 820km Plumtree-Mutare highway.
In April last year, Zimbabwe National Roads Administration (Zinara) board chairman, Mr Albert Mugabe was quoted in the media saying the rehabilitation of the $206 million highway project was 98 percent complete with its commissioning expected in May last year.
The project was undertaken by Infralink, a joint venture between Zinara and Group Five International of South Africa under a loan facility secured from the Development Bank of Southern Africa.
Chairperson of the portfolio committee Mr Dexter Nduna who is also the legislator for Chegutu West expressed concern over the time Government has taken to commission the highway despite the loan facility for the project having been advanced in full.
“The date for commissioning the Plumtree-Mutare highway is not yet there because the signage and reflectors have not been put. As a Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Transport and Infrastructural Development we are very concerned by the delays in putting the signage and reflectors which has also delayed the commissioning,” he said in an interview.
He said work on the highway should have been completed long ago given that money for the project has all been released.
“We have written to Parliament asking to interrogate the Minister of Transport and Infrastructural Development (Dr Joram Gumbo). We will present that report in Parliament after the festive season seeking explanations why the signage and reflectors for that highway have not been put when the resources for that project were disbursed in full.”
Efforts to get a comment from Dr Gumbo or his Permanent Secretary Mr Munesu Munodawafa were unsuccessful as their mobile phones were not being answered by the time of going to print yesterday.
On the recently commissioned $150 million Victoria Falls International Airport project, Mr Nduna said a report will also be presented in Parliament highlighting their findings during the portfolio committee’s tour of the airport prior to the commissioning.
The state-of-the art Victoria Falls International Airport, which President Mugabe commissioned last month, now has among others, a new international terminal building, a new four-kilometre runway, new control tower and a refurbished domestic terminal with a capacity to handle 1,5 million travellers per year.
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