MUTARE– The Zimbabwe National Road Authority (ZINARA) has disbursed RTGS$6.8 million to City of Mutare for road rehabilitation works amid concerns by the city fathers that the road is not being disbursed in a sustainable way.
Mutare Mayor, Blessing Tandi said the disbursed funds was only sufficient to cover only 1.2 kilometres.
He said the model of disbursement of ZINARA funds was unsustainable as they required acquittal of certificates of work done, which can spiral the costs of a project if it is not done on the agreed schedule.
“We are faced with a myriad of challenges because the macroeconomic environment that is prevailing as of now is haunting us as a local authority, which is the lower tier of government-mandated to ring-fence our revenues and all our disbursements are according to the votes that we have.
“As a city of Mutare this year we have budgeted RTGS$6.8 million towards our routine maintenance of roads and that should cover almost 1,2 km of resealing within the city but the challenge that we have is the process of disbursement of funds from ZINARA.
“We are facing a lot of challenges in disbursement looking into account at the RTGS$6.8 million we are getting if we reflect is this amount adequate for the city with the traffic that we get and truckers passing through from Mozambique.
“As a result, we will end up using council resources because truckers are damaging our roads like the Simon Mazorodze road it has been damaged by truckers, so the disbursement we are getting from ZINARA is inadequate to maintain our roads infrastructure.
He added, “ZINARA because of its processes and government processes anticipates that we acquit certificates of jobs done and then the pay, which means that our budget can blow through the roof if a contractor fails to do a job.”
Tandi said although the local municipality procured three refuse trucks it was still faced with serious constraints due to the macroeconomic environment as supply and delivery of fuel is not consistent.
He said there was a need for investment in plant and machinery to be able to maintain the city’s predominantly gravel roads. legacy problems passed on from previous regimes
“We have procured trucks to improve our refuse collection system but now due to the prevailing situation we are facing challenges in terms of procuring fuel sometimes we procure but deliveries are not timeous.
“Plant and equipment is also a major challenge that we are facing as a city because 90% of our roads as a local authority are gravel roads but we don’t have our own grader to maintain these roads.
“These are part of the legacy issues that are seriously constraining our service delivery, we have too many legacy issues that affect operations in the City of Mutare to try to address that we should buy our own plant and equipment,” said Tandi.
