Bulawayo councillors have raised an alarm that the local authority has missed its deadline to attend to the city’s deplorable road network before the onset of the rainy season.
Contributing to the debate on the state of the city’s roads at the last full council meeting, Ward 4 councillor Silas Chigora said it would be impossible for the local authority to rehabilitate its road network before the rains start.
“There is need to follow up on the people who are fixing roads. The engineering department needs to make sure that they enforce progress. We are now in the rainy season and it is a fact that you cannot fix the roads when it is raining. We are slacking in playing our supervising role as the city council,” he said.
City Mayor Solomon Mguni concurred with Cllr Chigora noting that the engineering committee delayed in presenting its road rehabilitation plan.
“The contracts were presented to us in October and the projects are supposed to be finished by December. How is the engineering department going to reconcile time to make sure that by the time we get to December all these works will be done? We are already in the rainy season,” the Mayor said.
Ward 28 Cllr Kidwell Mujuru also complained that road works were taking too long to be done in Cowdray Park.
“In our ward, we have been waiting for over five months to have our funds approved for contractors. Roads are in a deplorable state and residents are struggling to navigate their way around their areas. Now with the rains coming their plight is likely to get worse,” Cllr Mujuru said.
Meanwhile, the deputy mayor, Cllr Mlandu Ncube, said there was need for the local authority to follow up on companies that were laying cables on the roadsides to ensure that they rehabilitate the areas they dig up.
“There are companies which install cables on roads. They do not restore the road to their original state. We need to monitor them closely and enforce that they leave the roads in an acceptable state,” said Cllr Ncube.
