By Neo Kolane
The Roads Directorate has acknowledged that many tarmac roads in Maseru city and other urban areas in Lesotho are in a bad state and are in need of urgent refurbishing.
The roads are said to have exceeded their life span. Evidently needing major repair, the condition of the pothole-riddled roads is aggravated by the torrential rains that are currently pounding the country.
The Roads Directorate is responsible for construction, upgrading, rehabilitation and maintenance of primary, secondary, tertiary and other roads as well as bridges on the Lesotho road network.
The public relations manager of Roads Directorate, Nozesolo Matela, says the Directorate is facing an immediate task of maintaining roads countrywide.
“The Roads Directorate is compiling an inventory of the condition of the roads so that inspection is conducted and where need be, interventions are made which include an estimate of the cost of the damage.
“In Maseru, we are working with the 2021-2022 budget which was not enough hence the directorate is currently receiving some funding from the Road Fund to patch parts of the damaged roads,” Matela said.
She also disclosed that roads are designed and constructed such that their lifespan is 20 years, so those that have gone beyond this time require major repair and rehabilitation.
Matela clarified that routine road maintenance and intervention have to be done at the right time “as failure to do so will lead to more damage to the infrastructure.”
She said a plan to overhaul roads was drafted in 2016 but lack of funding is putting all efforts to maintain the roads in jeopardy.
“However, funding remains a challenge and as such we will keep improvising and maintaining what we can, when we can.”
The state of Lesotho’s roads was a noticeable feature in the 2020-2021 government budget speech which referred to it as ‘a painful challenge of road construction’.
“It is vital to have proper roads. They account for 90 percent of all travels in the country. This shows that roads are the lifeblood of the economy. Agriculture is dependent on roads. You travel by road to a health facility. So when roads are not up to the required standard, road safety is adversely affected.”
The budget speech said the financial resources for road construction were limited as the burden for that infrastructure’s maintenance is huge.
“A programme of building new roads comes at the expense of maintenance of the existing road network. Maintenance of the existing network comes at the expense of building new roads.
“The result has been severely damaged roads that will not live up to their designed lifespan and will cost, it is estimated, no less than M12-billion to rehabilitate the current network,” the budget speech said.
The then minister of finance Moeketsi Majoro said the government was facing a difficult question of the trade-off between maintenance and new investments in road construction.
He said while mulling this conundrum, government was assessing bundling of new road tenders with maintenance plans for whoever would win the tenders. This would ensure that construction companies considered the risks of poor workmanship in construction.
In an interview with theReporter a light motor vehicle driver, Tholoana Kena, quipped at the condition of roads, describing them as ‘quite upsetting’.
She blasted the government for what she termed ‘an embarrassing neglect’ that results in the motorists’ vehicles getting damaged. She added that with the current heavy rains and resultant flooding, it is sometimes near impossible to spot potholes on the road. Mind you some of these potholes as the size of a small swimming pool.
“This year alone, we have had to have the car fixed twice after it had driven into potholes. I had to buy new tyres and I lost a couple of wheel caps. We bought second hand wheel caps at M600 this month,” Kena said.
A worker at the ENS Motors and Plastic Repairs, who preferred to stay anonymous, enthused that business is booming because the hazardous roads are forcing car owners to stream in repair their vehicles.
