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Business Reporter
THE Bulawayo City Council received close to $1,7 million from the Zimbabwe National Road Administration (Zinara) this year for the rehabilitation of road infrastructure in the city, according to latest council minutes.

“Zinara disbursed a total of $ 1,2 million at the end of the month (November). The total disbursed this calendar year was now $1,7 million,” reads the council minutes.

According to the local authority, the bulk of the latest disbursement would be used to pay for work done by contractors, and procurement of bitumen, cat mix and aggregates to support pothole patching and overlaying activities.

“An amount had also been reserved for contractors engaged for road line marking and road signage projects. It was expected that most programmes, which had ground to a halt would be re-commissioned…,” said council.

Some of the roads that the local authority was attending to included St Peters’ Road from Pumula towards Khami Prison. It was also highlighted in the latest council minutes that the roads along schools should also be attended to while the road rehabilitation programme should also be undertaken in every ward in the city.

BCC director of engineering services Engineer Simela Dube advised that Zinara was not the only source of funds from which city council was securing resources from.

“Zinara was not the only source of funds. Council also did fund roads and there was a strategic plan on how to deal with the roads. The council’s strategy was to deal with main roads first.

“Next were roads being used by public transporters in various suburbs and then roads leading to places of interest for example, schools,” he said.

Eng Dube said the community patching programme was used mostly in residential areas to minimise deterioration of the road infrastructure. This year, Zinara targets to collect and mobilise $290 million in 2018 compared to $202 million it collected last year after surpassing the targeted $195 million.

About $140.7 million of the targeted $290 million will be channelled towards funding road authorities in the country.

As Zinara has other obligations, it was being hoped that a balance of $150 million would go towards other existing agreements that it has with stakeholders such as the Development Bank of South Africa loan. Zinara revenue sources include tollgates, vehicle licensing, fuel levy, and transit fees.