Kasungu Munucipality in K171m road project
Kasungu Municipal Council has embarked on a project to maintain its main road, a development commentators have described as long overdue but welcome.
The road dissecting the municipality was found to be lean for a two lane connector, full of potholes and had no pavements for passengers, among other defects.
In an interview on Wednesday, Kasungu Municipality mayor Ireen Katola said the project, stretching from Puma service station off the Lilongwe-Mzuzu section of the M1 Road up to Juma Township near the district hospital, will see the council maintaining the road shoulders and filling the potholes.
She said the council will also apply a new layer of tarmac to the road leading to the main market up to the police station.
Katola explained: “We know this may not be enough looking at the challenges facing the council infrastructure-wise but it should be better than nothing. A road’s significance to socio-economic growth can’t be over-emphasized.”
But random interviews conducted have suggested the project is long overdue as the road had been in bad shape for years.
Stein Bakali, a shopkeeper, said: “Kasungu is a busy town and is one of the fastest growing in the country and yet our infrastructure has been below par. The road has been bad for so long. We needed this road yesterday.”
The municipality is also one of the few to administer a regulated bicycle taxi sector in the country with cyclists formed into associations and subjected to by-laws.
But Yanjanani Mwale, a cyclist from Kasalika Township, expressed gratitude for the project.
He said: “As cyclists, we are rarely treated as road users by motorists. And the fact that the road was narrow meant a lot of us were prone to traffic accidents. I’m happy the new road will have special pavements for both pedestrians and cyclists alike.”n
