TAURAI MANGUDHLA
Government has been forced to dip deeper into its coffers to rebuild a detour bridge in Chimanimani that was twice destroyed by heavy rains that pounded the area recently.
Rehabilitation of roads and bridges is currently underway in Chimanimani after they were swept away by Cyclone Idai last year.
A detour bridge on Biri-wiri river was destroyed twice and reconstructing the bridge twice was a lot of work, and put more strain on the budgets that have been affected by inflation, an insider told Business Times.
The bridge was built by JR Goddard. Manicaland provincial roads engineer Atherton Zindoga said the reconstruction of the bridge, based on the running contracts, was at the government’s expense.
“They have no insurance; the insurance is in the contract.
When we signed the contract, we said when something like that happens which is out of their control, the cost comes to government.
So we pay them (the contractor) for the repairs,” Zindoga said in a telephone interview.
“It was the Biri-wiri detour bridge that collapsed. There was a wash away of the main bridge, as we are repairing the main bridge we constructed a detour using pipes.
“Heavy rains of two weeks ago destroyed the detour crossing. We managed to put it back in a day and it was removed again, but now it’s back on.”
Efforts to get a comment from the contractor on its Borrowdale office telephone lines were fruitless.
Zindoga told Business Times last month that government is working with nine contractors, including Masimba Holdings, Bitumen and JR Goddard, to rehabilitate roads and bridges that were destroyed by Cyclone Idai last year.
Most of the bridges that were washed away by the Cyclone Idai had by last month been restored except for two bridges, including Biri-wiri.
“Those that were completely washed away have not yet been restored, they are work in progress,” Zindoga said.
The contractors are expected to complete work by end of April, Zindoga said.
At the time Zindoga anticipated works would go on without a hitch as the rains were normal and looked like no threat to the road works.
“We are fortunate this year the rains have been not as much as we normally receive during the rainy season.
As a result, the damage to our roads this year is very minimal and we are not expecting any further damages to the roads this year,” he said in February, adding “basically I am optimistic we are not going to have challenges like we had last year.”
In terms of costs for the project, Zindoga said estimates were being continuously reviewed in line with inflation.
