Lovemore Lubinda
The Harare City Council has urged the Zimbabwe National Road Authority (ZINARA) to answer motorist over the appalling state of roads in the city.
Addressing councillors in a full council meeting last night Mayor of Harare Bernard Manyenyeni said the city is being lambasted by motorist and the travelling public for ineptitude of the national road authority.
“We should not lose sleep over this issue,” Mayor Manyenyeni told the meeting, “The city has done what it was able to do under normal circumstances. It should not be burdened with the obligation.”
He said the city’s inhabitants have been remitting road taxes including licenses fees to ZINARA, but has not received anything back from the road authority.
“This issue of roads is an unfunded mandate, we have ended up drawing revenue from other critical areas of the city putting it into patching potholes, this should not be the case anymore.” said Mayor Manyenyeni.
According to Director of Works Philip Pfukwa, it may cost approximately $5 per square meter to fix a pothole while a kilometre stretch of road can cost$30 000 per tonne of tar.
Roads in Harare have been declared a State of disaster. Almost every stretch of the 6 000 kilometre road network has a pothole have after two decades without any meaningful maintenance.
