Donor bemoans poor road maintenance
Malawi’s lead donor in the transport sector, the European Union (EU), on Tuesday complained about lack of maintenance of road network in Malawi.
EU Ambassador Alexander Baum also linked lack of road maintenance across the country to ever-rising road accidents in the country and ranked Malawi roads as having one of the highest accident rates in Africa.
“The EU and other development partners maintain that, as a rule of thumb, sustainability, hence programmable maintenance of the road network and of transport assets in general, should have priority over the expansion of the network,” said Baum.
He was speaking in Lilongwe when he officially opened a two-day fifth joint transport sector review aimed at taking stock of development in the sector and progress made in the implementation of agreements made at the similar meeting in December last year.
EU’s budget support programme has road maintenance at the core of its objectives.
According to Baum, the creation of the Roads Fund Administration (RFA), with the capacity to raise its own resources from the fuel levy for roads maintenance, was an important undertaking by government but noted that in recent years, funds have not been sufficient or have simply not been remitted regularly to RFA.
He added: “The result is that there are hundreds of kilometres of roads in urgent need for repair or maintenance.”
Baum stated that such an undertaking requires a clear maintenance plan and the allocation of extra resources.
The ambassador complained that EU does not see, however, a clear response from the government to such a need.
“Quite on the contrary, the budget vote regarding roads, notably under the development programme, has maintained a focus on upgrading a new construction.”
Baum explained that the dramatic worsening in the macroeconomic framework of the last three years would have warranted an adequate re-prioritisation of activities, by keeping the quality of existing roads first, and postponing ‘non-imperative’ new upgrading road projects at a later stage.
On his part, Minister of Transport and Public Works Sidik Mia admitted during the meeting that maintenance of transport infrastructure is a major challenge for the sector.
He said as a consequence, Malawi’s transport infrastructure is in a dilapidated state.
“This can easily be seen in the road, air, water and rail transport subsector and this has had an impact on the competitiveness of all these modes of transport,” said the minister.
According to Mia, his ministry has taken some steps to address such a challenge through the inclusion of rehabilitation and maintenance projects of rail, air, road transport infrastructure in the Economic Recovery Programme (ERP).
But he also bemoaned lack of adequate financing to meet the needs of the transport sector on the ground.
