Tshabangu says it will take 67 years to complete the Bulawayo-Nkayi Road at the current pace

THE MINISTER OF TRANSPORT AND INFRASTRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT (HON. MHONA): Let me thank Hon. Senator Tshabangu for the lecture and statistics that he gave.  The Hon. Senator asked about the Government, whether it has changed or not but I want to say with the advent of the Second Republic, infrastructure development has been at an accelerated pace. Our roads were neglected for years but before that in 2000, everyone knew that the country was under very punitive illegal sanctions until today where funding of infrastructure was no longer flowing into the country. In other jurisdictions, you find that infrastructure development, you cannot sustain from your pocket of any given country.  You need to get concessional facilities from other development partners, World Bank, IMF to support your infrastructural development but alas in our case, we have been using our domestic resources.

Hon. Senator Tshabangu has highlighted that yes, we have covered 58km – that was the time and upon the coming of the Second Republic where we have earmarked 15 km which I have talked about.  So, even if you were going to do your numbers at most, maybe we were doing 5km but the question was also raised by Hon. Sen. Ndlovu where I indicated that at that pace, we now need to accelerate through private players since we are building the country together so that we have one who would then take the entire road.

So, in that trajectory, you will see that pace and I want to affirm to Hon. Senator Tshabangu that Nkayi Road is on the top of our agenda in terms of our dashboard as a Ministry.  I want to assure you that this year you will see tremendous work along that road.  I talked about the 90km because I had factored in the 58 kilometres that you are talking about and the 15 km that we are currently working on so that we get into Nkayi town. 

So this is precisely the roadmap for the Nkayi Road but it is not only the Nkayi Road, we are looking at the entire road network where we also need to prioritise very emotional roads.  In particular, Nkayi Road is one of the emotional roads. I concur with the Hon. Sen that we need to move with speed but I want to assure you that we are no longer going to be doing the 1,6 km that you have seen.  I can cite a very good example, what you have seen around this Parliament where we started four weeks ago, but look at what we have done already.  This is the same magnitude that we are going to descend on the Nkayi Road.  So I would also challenge you to continue coming to my inbox on the particular road if you do not see any progress.  I thank you.

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