Whither city roads?

Marshall Bwanya Features Writer
Driving on Harare’s roads has become a nightmare. The city council’s negligence of social service including roads has risen to alarming levels. Despite the fact that roads have attracted a number of lawsuits from motorists who have had their vehicles damaged the council has failed to take heed and work towards improvement of the city’s road network.

The continued deterioration of the state of the city’s road network has been blamed to several issues including financial constraints, neglect and misplaced priorities by the City Fathers.

Residents believe the council has neglected its duties in favour of personal aggrandisement, political haggling and lack of technical ineptitude while service provision plummeted.

Although some various stakeholders such as churches, voluntary groups and residents have made it an obligation to temporarily cover the potholes.

Their efforts to improve the city’s roads may appear progressive but unfortunately the temporary measures always come to naught as the damages continue unabated.

A viable long-term solution is still required to solve the bad road network impeding economic development.
But does the bad state of roads reflect genuine challenges local authorities are facing to provide sufficient road amenities to general citizens? The deteriorating roads and increasing potholes have a lot of negative socio-economic, environmental and economic effects on society as a whole.

Urban Development Corporation and Municipal Development Partnership for Eastern and Southern Africa consultant Mr Percy Toriro said it was high time the authorities come up with a holistic plan to improve the city roads.

He cited two main factors leading to the poor state of roads in Harare and other cities.
Mr Toriro said the life of the roads had since expired and it was necessary that a new road network be designed than continued patching and re-patching the roads.

“Firstly, all road infrastructures have a design lifespan. Once this lifespan has been reached, it is logical that massive failure begins to manifest itself through weaknesses such as potholes. Patching the potholes will only come as a temporary measure. Secondly, during the life of such roads there must be both programmed and routine maintenance. That has not been the case with most of our roads as the country was going through an economic downturn caused by the illegal sanctions,” he said.

Mr Toriro said poor roads lead to all sorts of negative occurrences on roads such as high vehicle maintenance and road accidents by motorists trying to avoid road bad sections.

This, in fact, had resulted in many garages no longer giving guarantees for vehicle shock absorbers in the city.
The Zimbabwe Republic Police traffic section, however, argued that trenches and potholes were not the main cause of some road accidents but motorists’ failure to adjust to conditions of the road.

Assistant Inspector Mr Luckmore Chakadza said motorist should always adjust to the conditions of roads and should not blame the potholes and trenches for mishaps on the roads.

“The blame should not be on the bad state of the road but the motorists’ failure to adjust to road conditions and exercise caution. It is imperative that our drivers take caution in bad roads. Every driver should take care of their vehicles and feel for the other users of the road. Our people should not blame the road for carelessness driving,” he said.

Harare Residents Trust director Mr Precious Shumba said worn-out roads and potholes were detrimental to the health of both motorists and residents.

“Dusty roads cause pollution to our environment while potholes increase expenses on motor vehicle maintenance, purchasing of new tyres and shocks.

“And motorists have nightmares travelling on these roads increasing the chances of accidents,” he said.
Mr Shumba added that central Government must work closely with the local authority to ensure that funds are made available for road maintenance.

He also appealed to Zimbabwe National Roads Administration to disburse sufficient funds to City of Harare to repair the city’s roads.
“Vehicle sympathy”

Traffic Safety Council of Zimbabwe spokesperson Mr Ernest Muchena stressed the importance for motorist to exercise caution when approaching trenches or potholes.

“All motorists should exercise caution when approaching roads with trenches or potholes.
“Motorists should adhere to ‘vehicle sympathy’ to avoid damaging their vehicles as this may have long-term effects that may cause other accidents in the near future,” he said.

The Harare City Council is mandated by Urban Councils Act to develop and maintain roads stated a number of reasons hindering their moral and statutory obligation to effectively maintain road network infrastructure.

Harare Council’s Director Engineering Services, Engineer Philip Pfukwa, said the council was sourcing funding to rehabilitate and maintain road infrastructure network, since the current inflows in the council were not adequate for any major construction projects.

“Currently, council is facing challenges to fund these extensive rehabilitation works programmes as allocations from Zinara are not enough to make any meaningful impact.

“Due to lack of periodic maintenance over the last 15-20 years, most roads will have to be reconstructed as the current work being done is not the long term solution,” he said.

Zinara spokesperson Mr Augustine Moyo could not give their position on this issue.
Local transport mogul Mr Johannes Chinoda, who owns Summerton Transport, said worn-out roads and potholes were proving to be costly for business.

“The bad state of roads negatively affects business because we incur unnecessary costs and losses because of delays and setbacks when vehicles sustain damage in process of transporting goods.

“This leads to us losing credibility to our clients as some vehicles transporting goods or merchandise fail meet the required deadline tending to technicalities caused by trenches and potholes along the way,” he said.

There is need to for local and central Government to engage with corporate partners to not only rehabilitate our roads but also upgrade them.

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