Wellington Mahwende

 Brighton
Chiseva

MASVINGO
– The recent rains received in Masvingo
have caused a huge damage to roads in the high density suburb of Victoria Ranch
rendering the majority of them unusable causing an outcry amongst motorists and
residents.

Remainder of Victoria Ranch Consortium
chairperson, Wellington Mahwende said they were worried by the deplorable state
of the roads and said plans were underway to rehabilitate the roads starting in
April this year.

Mahwende said they were sending a
tender invitation for the construction of roads and said works are expected to
begin at the end of the rain season.

“Our roads are in a sorry state and
currently we cannot do any regular maintenance like grading because of the
rains but once the surface dries we will put a grader to do maintenance,” said
Mahwende.

Mahwende, who is also one of the chief
land developers in Victoria Ranch, said they were in the process of looking for
a contactor to service the roads by April.

“We are putting an advert calling for
tenders to construct standard roads in the suburb and construction should start
as soon as possible. We hope by April we would have put everything in place to
start the construction,” said Mahwende.

He said contrary to grapevine
information, people in Victoria Ranch had not paid for road construction fees but
were going to be engaged once a suitable contractor had been found.

“Many people believe that we have
charged our people for roads but we haven’t. We are going to do so when we find
a suitable contractor and residents will be paying directly to the contactor so
that there won’t be cases of misappropriation of funds.”
said Mahwende

He also said the Remainder of Victoria
Ranch Consortium had 14 housing cooperatives which were selling stands to their
clients but in terms of services they unite and do it together for it is
difficult for each and every cooperative to do roads or sewer works on its own.

“After getting quotations from the
contractors, we will then divide the amount with the number of households we
have and each household will pay towards the service.

“We did the same process when we laid
the ground work for water connections and we had a standing agreement with the
city council to supply water for at least three days a week.

“The agreement has unfortunately
faulted owing to the water challenges in the city,” said Mahwende.

He said they had done about 50 percent
of the sewer system in the area but could not continue with it because they
could not test if the gradient will be able to push the sewer to the main line
and were waiting for the city council to do the test for them before they
continue.

“We stopped the sewer project midway because
we are waiting for the trunk sewer to be completed.

“We don’t know if the sewer will have
pressure to flow to the main sewer line so we engaged city council and they
said they have an alternative way of testing and once that has been done, we
will continue because the material is already there,” said Mahwende.

Car stuck in Mud

 …as Zupco stops plying access routes

Clayton Shereni

MASVINGO –
While the blame game between central government and local authorities across
the country over the state of roads continues, the critically bad road situation
in Victoria Ranch continues to deteriorate without any action to put an end to
this mess.

The
majority of land barons in the area are well known Zanu PF politicians who have
amassed large wealth by taking huge acres of state land and subdividing it for
sale to desperate home seekers.

The
housing stands are sold in foreign currency but the land barons have never
bothered to service the roads in the area.

All
roads in the area are not surfaced meaning that they are more vulnerable to the
force of moving vehicles as well as rainy conditions.

The
current heavy rains which have been received in the area have caused a state of
emergency as motorists get trapped every day in the muddy gravel roads.

Victoria
Ranch Residents Association (VRRA) spokesperson Dereck Chikuni said the dusty
and muddy roads no longer deserved to be called roads as they are hardly
passable.

This
has seen public transport operator Zupco, which is the only utility company
allowed to operate since the lockdown began at the end of March 2020, shunning
the area altogether.

This
has left the commuting public facing huge challenges associated with getting
transport in and out of the suburb.

“There
are no roads in Vic Ranch to talk about because they don’t deserve to be called
roads. We raised that issue on numerous occasions and they told us to wait for
the rainy season to end. Transport operators no longer ply our routes. Masvingo
City Council has also refused to collect garbage here for many reasons including
the bad state of the roads,” said Chikuni.

Pools
of muddy water are all over the suburbs’ roads, with motorists needing to
carefully negotiate their way past these heavily potholed roads. However, land
barons have continuously ignored calls to rehabilitate these roads although
they continue to collect thousands of dollars from land sales.

Contacted
for comment, one of the land barons who is Zanu PF Cllr for Masvingo Urban Ward
6 and Masvingo City deputy mayor, Wellington Mahwende said they could not
repair the roads until the rainy season was over.

“Construction
of the roads is still underway and we will repair the roads for residents but
they have to wait for the rainy season to end. If we try to use a grader now,
it will get stuck in the muddy roads so we want to avoid a situation where we
redo the same thing over and over again,” said Mahwende.

Zupco
commuter omnibuses and buses have ditched the Town-Vic Ranch route saying it
was inaccessible.

Commuters
are left with no option but to walk from Gomba Bhopping Centre in Runyararo
West suburb as the minibuses do not go further than that.

Last
week the government declared all countries major highways a state of disaster
due to excessive rains which have been received.

The
rains are affecting the country’s old and poorly-maintained road infrastructure
which is not sufficient to service a growing vehicle population even in drier
seasons.

The
Metrological Services Department recently projected a prolonged wet spell which
may last up until end of March, meaning residents of Victoria Ranch will need
to cope with the almost unbearable challenges of lack of public transportation.