The City of Bulawayo is seriously considering using gravel roads instead of tarred roads after admitting that they do not have the resources to maintain the tarred roads. This comes after the the heavy rains which exposed so many potholes in the country’s roads. The roads of Harare have actually been declared a state of disaster by the government.
Ward 28 councillor, Collet Ndlovu told a full council meeting on Wednesday
As Bulawayo, we have to be serious about our roads. We now know that trying to tar our roads will take us forever.
Maybe, we should concentrate on grading the roads, but it seems even that is taking a long time, even up to a year in some wards. I propose that the graders be allocated per ward. If you are going to grade five kilometres in Cowdray Park, it is as good as if you have done nothing. At least if the graders could be allocated per ward, that would be better.
Ward 26 councillor, Norman Hlabani added:
We cannot afford to take care of our roads on our own. Let us swallow our pride and engage private players in this.
More: Newsday
Resorting to gravel roads is conceding defeat to allowing diversion of vehicle licence fees and other road user charges to benefit a few. The solution is to return the vehicle licence fees to the local authorities for use on local roads for which the fees are intended.
I agree with you that they have to do something or make IT a law that license fee’should benefit these road projects instead of doing it a cheaper way or auction land or properties even sale property to raise some of the money cause honestly who wants to be driving their brand new cars on the gravel