CMED invests US$ 3,5m in new road equipment
THE Central Mechanical and Equipment Department (CMED) says it invested US$3,5 million towards the acquisition of new road construction equipment and machinery as part of its recapitalisation plan.
On Monday, Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister Felix Mhona commissioned the new equipment, saying it will allow CMED to play a pivotal role in the implementation of Government developmental programmes.
CMED capitalised on the Government's change of model on delivery of road infrastructure to venture into road construction and maintenance business and set up a Construction and Civil Works unit to tap into the infrastructure development sector.
CMED managing director Engineer Davison Mhaka said the department will continue investing in equipment to ensure all branches countrywide are capacitated.
“What we have acquired is for road construction and we are going to continue the process of acquisition. We are spread throughout the country, and as a development agent of the Government, we need to be active in all the rural areas and urban cities.
“We want to ensure each CMED depot throughout the country is capitalised to ensure that they can also do roads in the respective Provinces,” he said in an interview.
Eng Mhaka said CMED is owed US$10 million for works done hence if the funds are availed will capacitate the agent to acquire
more equipment and machinery.
“When you do roads, you expect to be paid, we are owed US$10 million for works we have done, we will be able to invest more into equipment,” he said.
He said the Government has been assisting in availing foreign currency for the acquisition of equipment and machinery as well as to meet
its foreign currency needs.
Eng Mhaka said CMED is also going to set up its own asphalt plant which it is currently subcontracting. Asphalt plants, also called asphalt mixing plants or hot mix plants, are equipment that can combine aggregates and bitumen to produce asphalt mix for road paving.
The asphalt mix can be widely applied to
the pavement of highways, municipal roads, parking lots, and airport express-ways.
Eng Mhaka said with the acquisition of multi-purpose equipment, CMED is able to diversify its operations and venture into new areas.
“CMED is venturing into land development and agricultural projects that include land clearing, dams and canal construction, and all irrigation-related projects.
“Furthermore, we are also considering land reclamation to restore our degraded and dejected lands due to mining, and this move seeks to fulfil the National Development Strategy (NDS 1’s) environmental protection, climate resilience and national resources management strategic objective.
“We have already completed the feasibility study and are engaging relevant stakeholders to support these new endeavours,” he said. Eng Mhaka said in the period 2021 to 2022 CMED managed to rehabilitate a total 41,7 kilometres of asphalt roads and 340,48 km of rural roads across the country.
He said the total kilometres done for these two years were however hampered by liquidity and foreign currency challenges, otherwise, targets were higher than the achieved kilometres.
“Currently, the organisation has ongoing projects that have a total of 52 km of asphalt roads and 200 km of rural roads.
According to NDS1, Zimbabwe has a road network of 84 000 km, out of which 93 percent of the network is in fair or poor condition and in need of rehabilitation or periodic maintenance.
The country has targeted to increase the number of kilometres of road network converted to meet Southern Africa Transport and Communications Commission (SATCC) standards from 5 percent to 10 percent by 2025 and to increase the number of kilometres of road network in good condition from 14,702 km to 24 500km by 2025.