adminMorris Mtisi
SMALL boys and girls between ages 8-10 risk their lives voluntarily filling in pot-holes along heavily potholed roads in rural Manicaland.
The potholed road between Tanganda Halt Junction and Sabi Valley on the Tanganda-Chiredzi Highway has become a suicide trap for little money-mongering imps.
While we must applaud rural children’s entrepreneurial ingenuity, we must help to stop dangerous money-making escapades like the one shown above in this picture.
These two little brothers who refused to give The Manica Post their names are not employed by the District Development Fund or Ministry of Road Construction. They are not qualified constructors too. If they ever have companies at all, they are not registered companies. Zimra does not know them.
Equipped with only a shovel, obviously “stolen” from home, these children risk being run over as their work place are busy highways. They do not display Road Construction Ahead or Men-at-Work signs in their road engineering sites.
The more daring ones go down on their knee in the middle of the road when a vehicle approaches, hands stretched out for alms from a kind motorist who may think the children deserve a thank-you for voluntarily filling up potholes.
My own driver and companion thought otherwise and kept her hand tightly fisted. She however agreed to stop while I had a chat with the two rustic pothole fillers.
The two in the picture we caught “working” on the stretch between Sabi Valley and Mutema turn-off around what used to be called Government Farm.
The Manica Post is concerned that drivers giving these children coins for their work are supporting a dangerous habit on the potholed roads. Drivers must simply stop being foolishly philanthropic and stop giving them money. This will save the children’s lives.
The few coins solicited from kind-hearted motorists will never justify a little pothole filler being run over by some hit-and-run driver.
In the recent past it used to be children picking up sugar-cane stumps dropped off by cane-hauling trucks from farms at Sabi Valley on their way to the sugar refinery in Chiredzi. Now it is filling up potholes for a few coins.
Concerned parents and motorists appeal for cooperation from all motorists along the potholed roads where this habit is rife.
If not giving coins will not stop these children, a good whip will quickly do the trick, one driver suggested.
This writer does not believe in the language of the cane, but agrees it can quickly change bad behaviour if children refuse to listen. If one or two whips can easily stop several coffins and funerals, why not? Please act before some little dear life is lost, if it has not already happened unreported.
Online Reporter