Victoria Falls residents commend Government for road network upgrade, rehab Workmen construct a storm drain in Mkhosana suburb

Leonard Ncube in Victoria Falls
VICTORIA Falls City infrastructure, particularly social amenities, should be upgraded to meet city standards and present a good image of the country.

This was said by Victoria Falls residents as they commended Government for availing funds to upgrade and rehabilitate the city’s road network.

The local authority has this year received $6 million of the $67 million allocated to it by Government through the Emergency Road Rehabilitation Programme (ERRP2) and the council used the money to rehabilitate roads.

Government which has declared the country’s road network a state of disaster after most roads were damaged by incessant rains last year, has embarked on a programme to rehabilitate the roads.

Workmen construct a storm drain

An ERRP2 monitoring team toured the Victoria Falls roads rehabilitation projects recently and expressed satisfaction with the work done so far.

A snap survey by a news crew later on showed that some of the teams are working on storm drains in the flood prone sections of Mkhosana suburb and near long distance bus rank in Chinotimba.

The council targets to construct about 3km of new road network, reseal 4km and complete work on storm drains before end of next month.

Gravel has been delivered on most of the targeted roads while trenching has been done for storm drains.

The city’s engineer, Mrs Sherinah Sibanda said council was cognisant of the dangers of flooding hence was working on storm drains.

Ms Sherinah Sibanda

Speaking to Chronicle, residents commended Government and the local authority for taking the initiative to improve the city’s image.

“We might have issues with council but where good work is done we have to be grateful. The council has done well so far and we hope they are going to attend to all areas that need storm drains so that we don’t have a repeat of the past years when residents lost property due to flooding,” said Combined Residents Association chairman Mr Kelvin Moyo.

He said Victoria Falls should adopt international standards in terms of its infrastructure development.

Mr Moyo implored authorities to consider allowing the local authority to benefit from a certain percentage of revenue generated from tourism and use the money to fund infrastructure development. “Clients now want to do township tours hence the need for our infrastructure to be five-star standard. There should be no difference between amenities in suburbs and in town,” added Mr Moyo.

A resident Mr Mandla Ncube said blocked drainage is not good for the city.

Mr Mandla Ncube points to a storm drain under construction in Mkhosana

“We are tired of flooding in our areas every year and we want to commend council for working on the storm drains. This is the first time we are having storm drains here,” he said.

Another resident who identified herself as Mrs Chiwara implored the council to ensure the storm drains are deep and strong enough to contain the amount of water that usually floods the suburb during the rainy season.

“You should see the amount of flooding that takes place here when it rains. We think these storm drains are not deep enough,” she said.

Mayor Councillor Somveli Dlamini

The local authority contracted Valiant Construction to do the storm drains.

The city mayor Councillor Somveli Dlamini thanked the Government for releasing the money on time. — @ncubeleon

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