The province of Manica needs a little over 385 million meticais for intervention works on the main roads at the end of the 2021/21 rainy season.
The province has 3,007 kilometers of roads, of which 2,463 are classified and the rest are unclassified. Of the total, 683 are surfaced roads and 1,780 are unpaved.
Some of this infrastructure was destroyed by the rains and by cyclones Chalane and Eloise. The level of passability in this province is 80 percent. The remaining 20 percent need urgent intervention to facilitate the normal circulation of people and goods.
The fact was made public a few days ago by the provincial delegate of the National Roads Administration (ANE) in Manica, Agapito Cruz, in a meeting of the Provincial Roads Commission.
At the time, Agapito Cruz explained that the province currently has about 271.2 million meticais available, an amount considered insufficient for a complete intervention in the main roads.
“Of the amount needed, the sector has planned 153 million meticais for routine maintenance of coated roads,” he said.
According to him, the periodic maintenance on National Road number Seven (EN7), in the Guro-Luenha section, is budgeted at 122 million meticais, while the localized improvement of coated and uncoated roads has an estimated cost of 52 million meticais.
“Despite these constraints, we can say that the state of traffic in our province is good, although 20 percent of the roads are degraded. There is an effort in the sense of solving this problem of the roads”, he referred.
He added that we also have some bridges, aqueducts, and asphalt that were damaged by the rains. This requires more resources and a deep intervention to allow us to have quality roads in our province”.
Meanwhile, the governor of Manica province, Francisca Tomás, challenged the Road Fund, the National Road Administration, and the district governments to plan together “It is in those areas where we need improved roads to facilitate the movement of people and goods. We have agricultural production that needs to be moved to other parts of the province and the country.
As you know, we are in agricultural marketing time, so it is important that we have the access roads in better conditions,” he said.
