Ministry aware of poor road condition in the North

Submitted by TemoL on Fri, 31/07/2009 - 7:38am

The poor road conditions in the Northern Division has been a growing concern for the Ministry of Transport, Works and Public Utilities says Ministry spokesperson, Sainiana Waqainabete.

Ms Waqainabete acknowledges the current challenges being faced by business owners and the general public in the North particularly with the poor road condition.

She added that additional funding has been in place as a temporary measure for the poor road conditions in the North.

Highlighting the lack of resources as one of the main factors which has hindered work, Ms Waqainabete confirmed that a new fleet of machinery has arrived which is an added boost to the Department of National Roads which has been carrying out road maintenance work.

“The Government for the first time in 9 years has been able to secure 16 graders and 12 rollers which would be distributed around the country. This will be a very much added boost to the current fleet of vehicles or machinery that the Ministry have,” Ms Waqainabete added.

Ms Waqainabete added that they spoke to the relevant logging companies in the North on the fact that loggers continues to carry loads which were over the mandated weight requirements which has forced the Land Transport Authority to implement weigh bridges around the country.

“These weigh bridges will now act as a deterrent and we will enable them to find those culprits who have continued to abuse the roads with over loaded vehicles and hopefully when that is addressed, loggers will take it upon themselves to be more responsible and refrain particularly from loading vehicles in bad weather,” Ms Waqainabete added.

With the road user levy, Ms Waqainabete said there should be an increase improvement in road condition as the levy was particularly designed for road maintenance around the country.