The Forum for Democracy and Development has appealed to the Road Development Agency to quickly address the road network challenges in Chama district of muchinga province.
FDD Chairperson for Labour, Employment and Social Development Yotam Mtayachalo says the 65 Kilometer stretch of the road between Chief Lundu’s chiefdom to Luangwa bridge on the Matumbo-Chama road is becoming extremely impossible for vehicles to pass as motorists are getting stuck on daily basis especially at Mpyanakunda village where the road is very bad and the situation has been aggravated due to the onset of heavy rains in the area.
Mr. Mtayachalo said the bad stretch of the road at Mpyanakunda village is a source of grave concerns and infact it is a very short distance and his party is wondering why this part of the road was not worked on before the rain season.
Mr. Mtayachalo however the Road Development Agency should urgently send its road engineers to the area to assess the situation so that as an interim measure something can be done urgently to make the road passable because this road link is economically vital as it connects Chama to Chinsali the provincial headquarters of muchinga province and other surrounding districts.
Mr. Mtayachalo has further appealed to the government to look into the plight of the people of Chama over the delayed construction of the bridge at Kamphemba river on the Chama-Matumbo road which has been abandoned by AVIC International due to lack of funding.
He said the vehicles have no access to the main central district because of high water levels in the river and as such there are marooned on the other side the river which is becoming extremely very difficult to transport goods and people into and out of the district as unfortunately people have to carry goods on their heads and we feel that the temporal bridge can help to alleviate the hardships people are going through.
“Furthermore,the Chama-Kanyelere and Muyombe road going to Chinsali via Isoka district is equally in a very bad state especially in Vwaza Game Management Area(VGMA) in short the district is cut off from both sides and therefore it is a huge challenge for government officials to travel to Chinsali the provincial capital to transact government business and also ferry relief food to hunger stricken areas in the district”, he added.
Mr. Mtayachalo said it is in light of the foregoing that we oncemore want to appeal to the government through relevant government agencies such the Road Development Agency; the Zambia National Service just to mention a few to urgently do something to easy the transportation of goods and people to and from the district failure to which government should consider taking the people back to Eastern Province where it is a little bit better to get to Chipata via Lundazi although the road is equally very bad as it has never recieved any facelift since 2006.
The RDA has also surprised us in Lusaka’s Ibex Hill Extensions which is just opposite the Salama Park area where the same RDA has done state of the art road network. In this area which is very near to our area the roads are looking beautiful leaving our only two roads that are almost impassable during this time of the season. It looks very improper that the next neighbour Salama Park area looks very different from our area. When we tried to inquire why this is so, we were told the roads in Salama Park area were worked on because there’re a lot of people who are in the corridors of po?itucal power who have houses in the area. Our roads were also earmarked to be worked on during the course of last season but to no avail. To make matters worse there are so many users of these impassable…
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To make matters worse, there are so many users of these impassable roads. We there appeal to the the RDA to seriously look at our plight and see to it that the same roads are worked on soonest.
The Chama – Muyombe – Isoka road was started by RB in 2010 up to now the contractors equipment is just marooned there.What can RDA say about this road which has taken over 9 years now. Muyombe is almost cit off from isoka our MP doesn’t even say anything about our predicament.