Harare council mulls concrete roads

Source: Harare council mulls concrete roads – DailyNews Live

Helen Kadirire      25 January 2017

HARARE – The Harare City Council (HCC) is considering constructing
concrete roads this year.

The local authority’s acting town clerk, Josephine Ncube, said cement
roads last longer, the materials are readily available and HCC had the
capacity to use such technology.

Ncube said the pilot project will start with the Arcturus Road.

“There is, from a technical perspective, quite a justification to have
cement roads rather than bitumen. Once Arcturus succeeds, we will spread
it to other roads in the city,” she said.

The drive to redo Harare’s roads comes after residents have been
complaining of the state of the city’s roads.

Council has not done any major maintenance on most Harare roads in the
last two decades, leaving them extremely disfigured and increasingly
unnavigable.

Harare Residents Trust (HRT) said while Zimbabwe National Roads
Administration (Zinara) is collecting licensing fees for vehicles, that
should not take away the local authority’s responsibility in road
rehabilitation.

The trust said that although part of the property tax charged on
residents’ bills goes towards road maintenance and street lighting,
nothing is being fixed.

“The money being generated from vehicle clamping and towing which goes
into city coffers directly, racked in through the traffic section, should
be contributing significantly towards road maintenance and
rehabilitation,” HRT said.

Last year, Harare mayor Bernard Manyenyeni said residents should blame
Zinara for the lack of road maintenance and repairs instead of council.

“Residents should focus their complaints on potholes and poor roads to
Zinara and not HCC.

“We should be getting about $40 million per year from Zinara for road
maintenance but they are only remitting $1 million, which is not enough
for standard repairs,” he said.