Treasury greenlights works to resume on Harare — Chirundu Highway
Contractors working on the Harare – Chirundu Highway rehabilitation and widening have resumed work since June, ending six months of no activity after Treasury had instructed them to halt operations as all efforts were being redirected to preparations for the SADC Summit in Harare.
The Business Weekly reported in June that contractors had been directed by the Treasury to shift much of their effort and concentrate all their resources to meet the SADC summit deadlines for inner Harare streets and roads leading to New Parliament, the venue of the conference.
This move by Treasury cast doubt on the timelines of completion of the US$550 million project.
Transport and Infrastructure Development Minister, Felix Mhona, in January 2024 said the project was earmarked for completion within the 18 months at a budget of over half a billion US dollars, making it ripe in 2025.
“Those who remember, for the Harare – Chirundu Road, we were talking of over US$550 million for the rehabilitation. This is what we are working with. As we progress, we will continue updating and briefing the electorate. He told journalists that not only Harare – Chirundu Highway was undergoing revamping, but all roads countrywide needed attention,” he said.
The Beitbridge-Harare Highway and Harare— Chirundu Highway is expected to be complete by 2025.
The Beitbridge-Harare Highway is 99 percent complete, where five local construction companies got contracts to work the busiest highway in the country known as R1.
However, according to one contractor who confirmed the resumption of work on the highway on condition of anonymity, said the timelines have been extended by six to eight months.
“We have been cleared to resume works, and if you go to Mapinga today you will see movement at the asphalt plant and also just after Karoi there is also movement,” the source said.
“But the problem now is that some works on the highway have to be redone and this will push us about 15 to 20 days more. For the overall project, we are now looking at an increased six to eight months more which pushes the deadlines to 2026 from the agreed 2025 deadline.”
Companies which got the green light to continue with the project from Harare to Chirundu are Masimba Construction (Pvt) Ltd, Tensor System, Exodus, Fossil and Bitumen.
Fossil Contracting is doing the Harare to Mapinga stretch, Tensor lifts it from there to Chinhoyi, with Exodus doing it from Chinhoyi to Karoi. Masimba Contracting is doing the Karoi to Makuti stretch with Bitumen world doing the Makuti to Chirundu section.
The highway is currently characterised by heavy potholes and tiny strips of tar that have largely suffered from heavy trucks going and coming from Zambia.
Bitumen World has already set up an Asphalt plant that produces 140 tonnes of the product in Makuti. The Harare-Chirundu is a Trans-African Highway, an artery linking Zimbabwe to South Africa, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania. It is part of the North-South Corridor Project and forms the entire Zimbabwean section of the Cape to Cairo Highway.
The North-South Multimodal Transport Corridor is under the African Union’s Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA). The PIDA is an all-Africa programme to develop a vision, policies and strategies for development of priority trans-regional and continental infrastructure, which includes transport; hence the rehabilitation of regional road corridors.-ebsinessweekl
