Minister Mhona says wrongly blamed for not fixing Zim’s potholed roads

By Staff Reporter

Transport and Infrastructural development Minister Felix Mhona says he has been wrongly blamed by the public for failure to rehabilitate the country’s battered roads which have seen motorists meandering through huge potholes everyday.

Mhona was asked by Hatfield MP Rewayi Nyamuronda during the ministers’ question time in parliament on Wednesday on what measures were being put in place by the government to rehabilitate roads in urban areas.

Nyamuronda told the minister that “there are no longer roads” in urban centres because of the recurrent damage and neglect that they have gone through over the years.

But the minister said repairs on the country’s roads were the duty of rural district councils and urban local authorities.

“I am happy that this question gives me the opportunity to explain to Zimbabweans and this august House that the roads are not in good shape,” he said.

“Most people think that the Minister is the one who is responsible for all the roads in the country but our roads have different people or different departments that are responsible for them. When we are in towns, the roads fall under local authorities but when we are in rural areas, they fall under the Rural District Councils.”

“When the roads are in bad shape, the question comes back to the Minister of Transport. The programme, which was introduced by the President, the ERRP2, means that when the local authorities are facing some challenges, it is the role of the Ministry to step in but the roads are supposed to be maintained by local authorities.”

Mhona challenged MPs to lobby for a bigger share of the national budget so that resources can be channelled towards fixing the critical infrastructure.

“Right now, most of the roads are destroyed. When we are allocating the budget to the Ministry of Transport, we must also take into consideration that our roads are in a bad state,” Mhona said.

“Hence, people must lobby for the Ministry of Transport to get more money during the budget season so that we use the money to rehabilitate our roads.

“The role of local authorities is to rehabilitate the roads in our different areas. Local authorities are the ones responsible for the refurbishment of those roads. But as the Ministry, we are not going to stop.

“While we are in conversations that local authorities must take charge of rehabilitating the roads, the Ministry is going to intervene and make sure that the roads are rehabilitated, as the President said that no place and no one is going to be left behind.”

However, local authorities have blamed red tape and continued interference in their administration by government on their failure to restore roads in their areas.