Some motorists in Lusaka city have demanded that Afcons Infrastructure Limited, an Indian company working on the Lusaka decongestion project should speed up its contraction works to ease the traffic congestion in the city.
This is after an observation from members of the public that Afcons has delayed to complete its works hence causing disturbances and traffic congestions. A check at their first project at Makeni shows that the project is still under construction and dates for completion are not communicated.
The Ministry of local government and housing had in April 2019 contracted India’s Afcons to construct filter-road and fly over-bridges in Lusaka to ease traffic congestions. In a notice circulated by the Ministry’s Director Department of housing infrastructure, works on the Arcades roundabout were expected to be undertaken from February 28, 2019 to December 31st 2019.
Arcades round-about was however closed from April 9, 2019 to pave way for contraction works of a flyover bridge and is expected to be opened on January 31st 2020. The project which was earlier anticipated to be completed within the period of 9 moths has raised concerns as some individuals have indicated that the company is slow at its operations and pace of construction, when comparing Afcons to Avic International, they are of the view that Avic is better than Afcons.
Some motorists talked to by the Zambian Business Times – ZBT are hoping that the project would be completed before the scheduled time adding that the works that have so far been covered do not indicate that the remaining works will be completed within the stipulated time.
And in a separate interview with the Engineering institute of Zambia – EIZ Vice President Policy Public Relations Eng. Eugene , disagreed with sentiments from motorists that Afcons has delayed to complete its project stating that it could be due to the company’s operations.
Eng. Haazele told ZBT in an exclusive interview that Afcons can only be accused of delaying to complete the project after it exceeds the scheduled time frame stating that currently, its working within the stipulated time hence should be given chance to do its works.
He said the comparison being made between Afcons and Avic is unfair saying both companies have been running different projects and that they all have similar traffic challenges because roads being worked on are bigger hence attract congestion.
“Comparing Afcons to Avic is like comparing an Apple to an Orange because the same thing was said when Avic was doing its road projects. We understand that people are frustrated when they are blocked or can’t access roads, but we just have to be patient because they have the required resources to do the job,” he said.
However, a cross section of motorists talked to by ZBT have expressed concern that India’s Afcons projects are less active and seem to be moving at a snails pace. When compared to Chinese Avic, the views are that Avic seems to work 7 days a week and delivering projects more timely than Afcons.
