NRFA Act needs reviewing – Mumba

By KETRA KALUNGA THE NATIONAL Road Fund Agency (NRFA) is in the process of reviewing the NRFA Act of 2002 to address high demand of road financing, chief executive Officer, Wallace Mumba has said.

Speaking when he paid a courtesy call on Central Province Permanent Secretary Chanda Kabwe yesterday, Mr Mumba said there was need for the agency to move away from being an infrastructure development funder to a resource mobilisation agency.

Mr Mumba said there was high demand in the infrastructure development financing hence the need to find ways to address it through the revision of the act.

He said the act had been dormant thereby failing to address the current infrastructure development as it does not allow the agency to mobilise funds for development.

“There has been serious demand on road infrastructure development, so for us to meet the demand we need to find ways to meet the demand,” said Mr Mumba. Mr Mumba said there was need to mobilise funds for economic roads like Mumbwa and Itezhi- Tezi as quickly as possible for the benefit of the country.

“We shall ensure that we finance economic roads like Mumbwa and Itezhi- Tezhi roads because this will impact positively to the economic growth of the country,” said Mr Mumba.

Speaking earlier, Mr Kabwe said Central Province was not benefiting from the funds being realised from the toll gates despite hosting a number of them.

Mr Kabwe said roads like landless corner, Mumbwa road and other economic roads were in a deplorable state and has urged the NRFA to fund the Road Development Agency (RDA)to start working on the roads.

“As a province we are hosting about four toll gates, but we are not benefiting from the funds being realised, roads are very bad,” said Mr Kabwe.