The municipality of Pemba, the capital of Cabo Delgado province, has no money to rehabilitate the city’s streets, some of which have been impassable for several years. The situation is considered serious and is most critical in the city’s bay, the historic area of the bay, where some streets built in colonial times are disappearing.
“Here in the old town there are streets that have never been rehabilitated since they were built around 1956, when Pemba became a city. Some of them haven’t even been used for a long time and are disappearing every day due to lack of maintenance. The one that goes to the port of Pemba, for example, is an important road for the city’s economy, but today it is in terrible condition and everything indicates that one day it will be impassable,” warned Abdul Anza, a resident of Pemba.
The problem of access roads is long-standing and affects all of the city’s neighbourhoods, where almost every street has potholes. However, the situation is considered even more serious in the suburbs of the bay, where all access roads are dirt roads, and are even worse than those in the city centre.
“Here in expansão, for example, all the streets should be paved, just like in the city centre, but to this day there is only dirt, and we don’t even know if one day we’ll have asphalt or pavement,” complained Rosa da Silva, a resident of one of Pemba’s suburbs.
In order to prevent the situation from worsening and to guarantee the circulation of people and goods in the city, the municipality had to turn to its partners. They provided material and equipment that is currently being used for small emergency interventions on roads considered critical.
“We have planned around fifteen kilometres between urban and peri-urban roads to minimise the problem. On the asphalted urban roads, we’re filling in some holes with cement while we wait for funds to buy asphalt. In the peri-urban areas, we’re doing soil replacement and earthworks. We’re doing all this with the help of partners who have joined forces with the municipality to improve urban mobility and change the city’s image a little,” said Silvetre Macie, Councillor for Infrastructure.
Some citizens recognise the improvement in access roads compared to the rainy season, and are satisfied with the filling in of potholes and earthworks, but others, especially those living on the outskirts of the city, remain dissatisfied and are calling for asphalt or paving.
“Every year they scrape the roads, but soon afterwards they have potholes again. What we want now is paving or asphalt, like what is happening in the city of Montepuez, where everything is beautiful,” demanded Agostinho Sabao, a resident of Pemba who, in addition to the poor state of the roads, can no longer stand the dust raised by the vehicles that circulate in the city’s suburbs.
Almost everyone who lives in Pemba wants asphalt or paving, so that the suburbs stop being suburbs, but the population’s biggest dream is the ANE CHUIBA road, a dormant project that if completed will be the widest and longest avenue built in the bay since Mozambique’s independence in 1975.
“All of us who live here in the expansion are waiting for the ANE CHUIBA road, but since it started it’s never finished, and the worst thing is that the road has been closed for a long time,” said Aniceto Mucaveia, a resident of the Eduardo Mondlane neighbourhood.
The work on the ANE CHUIBA road was valued at 400,000 US dollars, desolated by the National Petroleum Institute, and if it is completed, as well as being the longest, it will also be the first four-lane, two-way avenue to be built in Pemba after Mozambique’s independence.
Silvestre Macie, infrastructure councillor for the Pemba Municipal Council, promised that the government would soon make a statement on the ANE CHUIBA road.
“With regard to the ANE CHUIBA road, there is still a process underway in terms of administrative procedures and we will pronounce ourselves in due course. We are still working with the government at provincial and central level, whose responsibility it is with the municipality to assess the viability of this project, but because we are a government with responsibilities, we ask the population not to lose hope because things will happen, the problem now is to know when and how we are going to do things.”
The solution to the problem of access roads in Pemba is a long way off, and the municipality is in what is considered to be a complicated situation. After all, it promised to improve the city’s streets, but to date, it has no money, not even to continue with the paralysed works, let alone to maintain the few that exist, some of which were built almost fifty years ago.
O País
