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Lovemore Zigara Midlands Correspondent
KWEKWE City Council is being forced to maintain national roads which pass through its area of jurisdiction as the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure Development is failing to do so.

A senior official said the local authority is now maintaining part of the Harare-Bulawayo and the Kwekwe-Gokwe highways. A two kilometre stretch of the Kwekwe-Mvuma Road is also being rehabilitated by the local authority.

Council director of works, Engineer John Mhike, who was responding to a question from Ward 10 councillor Aaron Gwaladzimba during a full council meeting recently, said the local authority was being forced to rehabilitate the roads because the relevant ministry had ceased to service them.

“We’re maintaining the roads because we use the roads every day. Ideally the Ministry of Transport is the one which should be maintaining those roads but we can’t wait for them because we’re all aware of the challenges our government is facing at the moment,” he said.

“So we can’t just watch. We will keep on maintaining the highways even though they’re not council roads because we’re beneficiaries of these roads. We can’t leave them in a sorry state.”

Eng Mhike said council had also moved to put strips on the roads in the Central Business District as a way of minimising accidents due to the speeding vehicles which pass through the city.

The city council is battling to maintain its own roads which are littered with potholes.

Council needs to reseal and resurface the more than 1,000km of tarred road network in the city which have outlived their lifespan.

Mayor, Clr Matenda Madzoke blamed the poor state of roads on the Zimbabwe National Roads Administration (Zinara) which took away from councils the mandate to collect car licence fees.

Clr Madzoke said the $260,000 that council recently received from Zinara was not enough to resurface the city’s roads, a situation that has forced the local authority to use gravel to fill potholes.