H-Metro
Talent Gore
THE Zimbabwe National Road Administration is set to disburse $17 billion, in two weeks’ time, to all authorities, for the road rehabilitation programme.
Harare City Council will receive $1,1 billion.
Bulawayo City Council and Gweru Urban Council will get $338 232 414 and $196 249 227.
Mutare Urban Council will get $163 540 928, Masvingo City Council will receive $122 170 765, Mashonaland East will get $519 666 261, Mashonaland Central will get $451 591 400 while Mashonaland West will receive $741 425 947.
Manicaland Province will get $444 246 412, Midlands $661 434 426, Matabeleland South $495 155 562 and Matabeleland North $524 610 862.
Zinara board chairperson, Dr George Manyaya, said the disbursement of the funds will begin next month.
“We have set a budget of $17 billion for disbursements to provinces and major cities, our projection is to start the disbursements possibly mid-March, when we anticipate that the rains would have subsided,” Dr Manyaya said.
Following the launch of ERRP2 in 2021, Dr Manyaya said Zinara had so far disbursed Z$9,5 billion, to various road authorities, across the country.
“No single road authority is owed what it was allocated in 2021, the year 2021 was highly successful for Zinara, in terms of efficiently providing funding, for the emergency road works necessitated by Cyclone Idai, and the incessant rains received during the farming season,” Dr Manyaya said.
“It is no secret that the current state of our roads is worrisome, the President (Mnangagwa) declared the state of all roads to be a national disaster and went on to launch the ERRP2 to urgently ameliorate the devastation of our road infrastructure.
“It is in this vein that, in our engagements with the Road Authorities, we always emphasise the importance of delivering quality road maintenance to ensure that the limited funds are stretched further over the years so as to avoid a scenario where contractors have to attend to patching work recurrently.
“Let me emphasise that our role, as a fund administrator, is limited to availing funding to the road authorities.
“After funding is received by the respective road authorities, we follow the impact of the disbursed public funds by monitoring and evaluating their use, hence our mandate is to audit all the 93 road authorities in the country, to ensure that the funds have indeed been used for their intended purpose.”
Zinara CEO, Nkosinathi Ncube, said this year they had projected to collect Z$34 billion and part of it will be used to repay the DBSA loan, which was used to refurbish the Plumtree-Mutare highway.
