Hon. Charles Lubasi Milupi writes….
BELOW IS MY RESPONSE TO YOUR VALID CONCERNS ON THE STATE OF THE SESHEKE-LIVINGSTONE ROAD
Good morning everyone and thanks for your comments and observations. I value them greatly. Yes, ZNS working with the RDA undertook holding maintenance works on this very important road. That’s the work that we all witnessed. However, during my last visit to this road, I said the World Bank through the TRACER Project has released funding towards re-designing the road as it is reconstructed back to international bituminous standard.
I further projected that the reconstruction of the Sesheke-Livingstone Road will cost about US$120 million dollars. So the process to work on this international road corridor has not been halted. But we have to do a good job so that it doesn’t deteriorate to the levels we are all seeing just after five years from reconstruction.
Then again, the core road network is over 45,000km, out of which 80 percent is in a highly-deplorable state according to a 2021 analysis by the RDA. Therefore, we can only do as much at any given time using both public, private and donor funds to develop our road network countrywide.
That’s why other road projects are either taking off or commissioned across the country, even when roads like the Sesheke-Livingstone Road is at re-design stage. Once this stage is concluded we will move to the next stage in the procurement process and as we always do, we shall update you.