Relief for Matepatepa farmers

The rehabilitation of Bindura-Matepatepa Road by the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure Development is set to bring relief to farmers in the area who have been failing to take their produce to the market and the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) due to the bad state of the road.

Bindura-Matepatepa Road was identified as a hotspot by the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Hotspot Roads and its construction started in September last year and there is hope that farmers will start using it in May this year.

Mahuhwe-Kanyemba and Nyakasikana-Karanda Roads were also identified as hotspots and the committee is expected to visit these soon.

The committee visited Bindura-Matepatepa Road last Friday and the chairman of the task-force Permanent secretary in Vice President Constantino Chiwenga’s Office Rtd Major General Godfrey Chanakira said the lack of attention on the Bindura-Matepatepa Road in the past has been hampering economic activities in the area.

“The problem we have is connectivity and the roads need urgent attention. Another hotspot road is Mahuhwe-Kanyemba Road and the road linking Karanda Bridge. We will be visiting those two roads next,” said Rtd Major Gen Chanakira.

“The last time I was here this was a strip road. It is going to take time to complete the whole 95 kilometres but the good thing is that we have started. Resources permitting we will do it in phases.

“The purpose of this visit was to assess progress on the ground in terms of ongoing projects we consider to be hotspots. We consider them to be hotspots if they are topical because of the number of accidents or the bad state of the road that is hampering economic activities.

“As you know Matepatepa is one of the leading producers of agricultural produce, it is essential that there are good roads for transportation of their produce to the market.”

The provincial roads engineer Mr Kudzai Maganga said Treasury has set aside $12, 5 million for the rehabilitation of Bindura-Matepatepa Road.

“We have done a section of 10 kilometres and we managed to prime one kilometre with hopes to prime another kilometre on Monday. We will surface the two kilometres using asphalt concrete. We will finish 16 kilometres by end of May