Zinara still to disburse funds to Beitbridge

Published: 06 September 2017

THE Zimbabwe National Road Administration (Zinara) has not disbursed funds for road maintenance to Beitbridge Town since the beginning of the year.

The funds are urgently needed to upgrade the town's roads, most of which have not been tarred.

During a meeting between the local authority and residents last week, Beitbridge Town Council (BTC) finance director Anymore Mbedzi revealed that nothing had been received from Zinara during the first half of the year.

The meeting, a half year review session whose theme was "Beitbridge Ready for Municipality Status", also discussed, among other things, the general poor conditions of the border town's roads in relation to increased traffic.

Residents from a cross-section of the society in Beitbridge who attended the meeting believe the high prevalence of respiratory diseases in the community results from the fine dust generated by thousands of vehicles moving within the border town.

"Our roads need to be surfaced. We are talking about the high number of people with respiratory diseases caused by our roads," said one stakeholder.

Other residents felt that the toll fees collected by Zinara should be ploughed back into developing roads.

However, BTC confirmed that the town was still waiting for this year's disbursement.

"We are yet to receive funds from Zinara to be able to surface more roads ... this year we have not got anything," said Mbedzi.

Zinara runs the country's road tolls, collecting thousands of dollars from New Limpopo Bridge, the first road toll point in the country.

To date, not a single cent from those tolls collected from the bridge has been channelled towards the border town, whose roads are damaged by haulage vehicles and have turned out to be an embarrassment to tourists.

Meanwhile, Beitbridge is waiting for President Robert Mugabe to sign an approval of its envisaged municipal status which has been approved by its parent ministry.
- dailynews

Tags: Zinara,