The ManicaPost
Takunda Maodza Manicaland Bureau Chief
GOVERNMENT is satisfied with the nature of road and bridge repairs in areas hit by Cyclone Idai in March last year with most contractors having completed over three quarters of their assignments.
Most of the companies flocked to Chimanimani end of August last year after Government contracted them to repair the road network.
Cyclone Idai ravaged Chimanimani and Chipinge districts killing hundreds of people and destroying roads and bridges.
On Wednesday, Transport and Infrastructure Development Minister Joel Biggie Matiza and some members of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Transport and nfrastructural Development toured Chimanimani district to assess progress made so far in the rehabilitation of roads.
G.R. Goddard, Masimba Construction and Bitumen World are some of the major companies that were awarded contracts to repair the road network in Chimanimani district.
In an interview with The Herald after the tour, Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister Joel Biggie Matiza said he was satisfied with progress registered.
“From what I have seen so far the roads and bridges can withstand any heavy weather and rains. I am accompanied by the four portfolio committee members (on transport) so that they can also appreciate what Government is doing and the President has always said that this infrastructure must be completed in time and that good infrastructure must be in place and this is what we are witnessing. The infrastructure here can be put anywhere,” he said.
Minister Matiza praised the engineers contracted by the companies.
“The technical knowhow, the equipment and the engineers deployed by the contractors are hands-on and as I have seen from Mutare up to here the five bridges that I have gone through are as new as any other bridge. I am satisfied. Some areas, of course, they are slow but in some areas they have completed their works,” he said.
“We are going to bring in more equipment because we have realised that the hiring of equipment is very expensive. We want contractors to come in and do the work, contracted properly. This is localisation of contracts. The economy grows, the money trickles down to the villages and this is key.”
Acting chair for the Parliamentary Committee on Transport and Infrastructural Development Mr Robson Nyathi also endorsed the rehabilitation work as up to standard.
“We are very impressed with the work going on here and we came for our oversight role as the ministry was doing its strategic planning for the year 2020. From what we are seeing on the ground, we are very impressed. There has been very progressive work. The perception that local companies are incapacitated for such tenders is very wrong. The world over, Zimbabwean engineers are all over and they are actually employable in any country within our region and abroad,” he said.
In a separate interview at Skyline, the area most damaged by the cyclone along the Wengezi to Chimanimani Village
highway, Masimba Construction’s Engineer Anywhere Dingembira said works would be completed next month.
“We look forward to have finished all work here around February including road surfacing. We came here around September last year,” he said.
Some of the companies are facing challenges related to payment by Government and erratic fuel supplies.
“We have challenges in terms of diesel. It is a national problem but we are not getting it on time. We are sourcing our own diesel and it is part of the contract. We are getting payments but not at the time that we should be getting them. They are not coming at the contract time. I think we have received two payments since we started, the advance payment being the third one,” said Eng Dingembira.
“We have two outstanding payments and we are expecting it sometime this week.”
But while the companies have made major progress, recent rains that pounded the district left a trail of destruction in areas like Kurwaisimba in Chimanimani East.
On Monday night the rains heavily damaged a section of the road at Simbini near Lagos Township disconnecting Kurwaisimba from Kopa.
It also caused some landslides posing danger to some people in the area.
Bitumen World is now attending to the affected area.
“We came here on Monday after rains destroyed the road overnight. There was no proper bridge, they were just those boulders. We rushed to bring our equipment as the people here in Kurwaisimba had been disconnected from Kopa. We are now putting permanent structures,” said Bitumen World surfacing mananger Mr Cuthbert Gonhovi.
