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Charity Ruzvidzo Business Chronicle
THE Zimbabwe National Roads Administration (Zinara) will avail 2,000 litres of fuel to each local authority countrywide for powering graders it bought for councils for use in rehabilitation of roads.Zinara acting chief executive officer Engineer Moses Juma told delegates at a Chronicle business breakfast meeting in Bulawayo yesterday that his organisation, working with local authorities, was rolling out a massive road rehabilitation programme.

“Zinara gave 80 graders to councils in the country to undertake road rehabilitation and maintenance projects.

“Beginning September we’re doing a grading blitz and we’re giving 2,000 litres of fuel to each grader,” he said.

“Our target is to rehabilitate 10,000km of road network by December.  We expect to complete 40 percent of the gravel road by year end.”

He said Zinara has successfully taken over collection of toll and road access fees from Zimra and reported that the Plumtree-Harare-Mutare Road upgrading was 93 percent complete with 767km of the road widened.

Eng Juma said Zinara expected the project to be complete by the end of the year.

He said five of the nine toll plazas along the highway have been completed and hoped the remaining ones would also be complete by December.

Eng Juma said the designs for the Hwange toll plaza had been done adding a tender for its erection would be advertised soon.

At present Zinara workers in Hwange are operating in the open and there were reports they desert the tollgate site at night for fear of attack by wild animals.

The new state-of-the-art toll plazas are 100 percent solar powered, which Eng Juma said consumed only 40 percent of the energy generated.

Sixty percent of the energy could be offered to communities situated close to the toll plazas, he said.

Zinara took over collection of road access fees from Zimra last week from 14 border posts.

The body is responsible also for the allocation and disbursement to road authorities of road funds.