28 Jan 2021

Assistant Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Sethabelo Modukanele has informed Ntlo Ya Dikgosi that earth roads are graded once a year to correct the road profile.

Answering a question during Ntlo Ya Dikgosi meeting, Mr Modukanele said that if grading was done more frequently, the road would become a channel and ultimately result in drainage of rain water.

He also said gravel roads were graded on a quarterly basis to correct the road surface for corrugations.

Furthermore, he stated that due to the size of the road network, some of the work was done in-house while others were outsourced to private contractors.

Mr Modukanele said the roads department had two motor graders deployed at the Gantsi regional offices in Gantsi and Charleshill depot.

He informed the house that the advent of COVID-19 pandemic had affected maintenance plan, hence no maintenance was carried out during the first quarter of the current year.

Regarding Makunda-New Xanagas road, he said the Ministry of Transport and Communications had planned to grade the road once a year, since it was an earth road.

Ntlo Ya Dikgosi also learnt that the ministry has not been able to carry out its plans due to acute shortage of resources such as graders for the current financial year and that priority was given to Charleshill-New Xanagas which was an alternative road and had high traffic volumes.

Regarding New Xanagas-Charleshill, new road-Kacgae and main road – Bere, he said, the ministry planned to grade it quarterly and that the roads were all graded on the second quarter (July, August, and September 2020) and as per the plan.

Mr Modukanele further stated that road maintenance remained the country’s challenge, not only in Ghanzi District.

He stated that the challenge was earth moving equipment to maintain the roads, poor quality of road construction materials, saline water and the ponding of water on gravel or earth roads due to the nature of the topography, which made it difficult to open drains because the land was flat in its nature.

Furthermore, he stated that huge sums of money were required to overcome such challenges and that government was unable to do so, because of other commitments such as outbreak of COVID 19 pandemic, drought and economic down turn.

Kgosi Mbao Kahiko of Ghanzi West had asked the Ministry of Transport and Communications to explain how often the ministry maintained the roads that were in a bad state in the region. ENDS