Govt, contractors link makes highway renewal easier

WORK has now started on the northern section of the main north-south highway through Zimbabwe, the Harare-Chirundu Highway, following the successful near completion of the upgrade and rebuilding of the Beitbridge-Masvingo-Harare leg.

Five Zimbabwean contractors, the same five involved in the southern section, successfully tendered for the new work and were accepted, presumably for the good reason that the Government is now confident of the quality of their work and the value for money they give, and they in turn were happy to apply given the relationship they have built with the Government’s engineering and financial advisors.

But this is not some cosy relationship existing under the counter. Government engineers through the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development set the standards for the implementation of their designs, and then check each stage as they do the quality control as work proceeds.

The Ministry of Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion is prepared to pay the fair prices charged, but ensures that the charges are fair, and that the work done has been signed off as meeting the technical requirements.

Each of the five companies is perfectly aware that if through incompetence or worse substandard materials or workmanship were used or done, then their name would be missing from any future contract. As with everyone else they are only as good as their last job.

But that said, the Government has made it clear that it is rather proud that the Zimbabwean private sector has been building up contractors with the professional and technical skills, the equipment and staff to use that, and the logistical ability to do this sort of work.

When the Second Republic took office it inherited some messy proposals from foreign companies that appeared unable to do the work properly and in any case wanted quite incredible profit margins.

It decided to look at the local industry, and found that there were companies that could probably do the work better and at a fairer price. The relationship was built up from there.

One interesting point is the different way sections of the Harare-Chirundu Highway have been allocated compared to the way used for the Beitbridge-Masvingo-Harare Highway. The southern section saw fairly short sections allocated to each contractor and as they finished that satisfactorily then a new short section was allocated, and that could be a long way off.

For the northern work, the highway has been divided in five 67km sections, the whole length except for a modest section at the extreme northern end that was recently completed under a Japanese-funded programme and so does not have to be redone.

This gives each contractor a greater responsibility, and it will allow Zimbabwean highway users to do their own quality control as they compare each section. On the other hand it makes it a bit easier for the contractors and their logistics for materials and labour.

All five were urged to hire local people for as many jobs as possible. All five said they that for sound business reasons this was how they wanted to operate, having as many of their contract workforce as possible living close to the work and so solving a lot of the potential problems of accommodation and transport.

The workers can live at home and walk to work, or at least work to the pick-up point along the section to where the bus or truck will pick them up a few kilometres from where they are deployed that day.

One of the companies noted that this policy of local hiring would not just apply to unskilled and semi-skilled workers, but also for some of the skilled staff, such as drivers.

Political leadership was very keen on making sure of this local hire policy, but since it also helps to cut costs and avoid human resources problems, the contractors are on the same page. The longer sections for the whole project make this policy even easier to implement and opens doors to longer contracts for at least a good slice of the locally-hired workforce.

There is one important point that needs to be kept in mind. While a decent rebuild should last 25 years with little problem, routine maintenance is still needed. This might just mean making sure that the drainage continues to operate properly, so that there are no washaways or water erosion, but could also mean that tiny cracks are filled long before they even look like a small pothole, and that road markings remain clear and the like. Part of the damage to our national road network that the Second Republic is having to deal with is the result of delayed and then zero maintenance over some years. This meant some roads were far more badly damaged than they would be if they just wore out.

It is clear that we cannot let this problem arise again on what amounts to a new highway from Beitbridge to Chirundu via Masvingo and Harare, and should not let this happen on the roads where we trying to catch up on maintenance, such as the bulk of the Beitbridge-Bulawayo-Victoria Falls Highway. In fact as we get ever more roads and get more roads up to scratch, the maintenance budget will become an ever rising chunk of the national roads budget.

The other problem of having high-quality roads is that drivers can speed, and unless the law is enforced will speed. The Transport Ministry has been aware of this, hence the speed limiters for public service vehicles, but private cars and many smaller commercial vehicles are not included.

Fortunately a lot of technology, and relatively inexpensive technology, is now available and unmanned automatic radar speed traps are common in many countries and will need to become more common on Zimbabwean highways as we continue converting these to high-class roads. This aspect of road safety appears to be the only downside of the whole highway upgrade, but we need to deal with it.