When is Zimbabwe going to have spaghetti roads?

HON. GONESE: Thank you very much Mr. Speaker Sir. My supplementary question to the Hon. Minister of Transport is that in view of the fact that he has said that our economy is not ailing, why does the Government not proceed to do what modern economies are doing like the spaghetti roads which were mentioned earlier and have a system in place where there is no congestion. When we look at inter-connectivity between our cities, we can have freeways. He is talking of widening of roads but in developed economies, they have freeways and they are heavy in Kenya and Nairobi. The question is, if the economy is thriving as the Minister is portraying, the Government is failing to come up with the modern trains where you actually have freeways instead of merely widening the roads and in addition, have fly overs and so on instead of malfunctioning traffic lights which are contributing to the congestion in our cities?

THE MINISTER OF TRANSPORT AND INFRASTRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT (HON. MHONA):  Thank you Mr. Speaker Sir, let me also thank my learned colleague Hon. Gonese for that important follow-up question.  Mr. Speaker Sir, it is in the public domain that as a nation we are crippled by sanctions.  When it comes to infrastructure development, you do not develop from local resources. You find that infrastructure development in a number of jurisdictions is catered for by concessional loans, and we are not getting such loans.  We are actually rehabilitating our roads using our own generated resources, which then cater for the issues of timing projects where now we are currently seized with the Mbudzi Interchange.  I am sure the Hon. Member could have alluded to it that we have started.

Look at even Harare-Beitbridge and a number of our trunk roads where we have domestic resource mobilisation exercise to cater for such roads.  So, there is no way we can do anything and I would not want to hazard to answer the question when it comes to urban transport systems which falls under the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works.  What I can assure the Hon. Member is that, together with the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works, there is no way we cannot address the issues of transport.  We are now seized with rehabilitating the roads that were not rehabilitated for over a long time where we now need to start rehabilitating those roads before moving on to another stage of having the freeways as alluded to by the Hon. Member.  I thank you.

HON. MARKHAM:  Thank you, good afternoon Mr. Speaker.  Mr. Speaker, my question goes back to – in fact all the questions asked on policy today, if we as Members of Parliament had the programme for the Emergency Road Repair Fund, we would know what is going on.  I brought a supplementary two weeks ago, and it was just for my area, I have not received anything.

Mr. Speaker, it becomes pointless asking questions if ministers answer but do not supply.  I have been asking for the Road Repair Programme just for my area for months now and to date, I have not received anything.  I thank you.

THE HON. SPEAKER:  Ask a specific question.

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