Minister of Infrastructure has disclosed that the Construction of the long awaited Lusaka – Ndola dual carriage way road is expected to commence within two weeks. The key road has become a hell run with road accidents being reported frequently due to it’s bad state.
The start date of rehabilitation and construction of this very important road has been postponed about three times before but the minister has this time assured that it’s going ahead. Concerns have been on what rate the tolls would reach when the road is done via public private partnership – PPP.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with the Zambian Business Times – ZBT, Infrastructure Development Minister Charles Milupi stated that the major challenges that caused the delay in commencement of the construction had been the negotiations with the concessionaire.
He explained that from now onwards, there will be faster movement as the negotiations which were delaying the entire process, were concluded on the Friday 20th January 2023. Milupi told ZBT that the only remaining stage is to bring the documents together as per constitution so that the Attorney General can approve as a way of ensuring that all is within the law.
“Immediately the Attorney General gives an approval we shall officially announce and we expect that to be done within 1-2 weeks and then the Concessionaires will mobilize themselves to begin the process of working on the road.” He said.
When asked at what total cost the road will be developed, Milupi said, “we will announce when making it official but it is much less than what our colleagues had signed on off.
And with regards to continued extension of commencement date, Milupi said it was difficult to deal with the investors as they are coming to spend their money and needed an assurance that their investments were going to be safe. “First of all, we need to understand that private investors are coming to spend their money on a road and over a period of time they will be drawing back their money which is initial investment plus the marginal profit they would have made.”
“So in a way, they are owning that road and when you come now to negotiations, they look at the things that were once privatized like Zamtel and when the other Government came in and nationalised it, so these are some of the things that we were facing during the negotiation with the Concessionaires.” He said.
Milupi said it is not easy to deal with the matters like that but added that Government had reached a level where they had given assurance to investors adding that all this time government has not been idle but has been trying to negotiate with the investors.
He said it has taken longer than expected because it needed to be done properly. “If we had money, we would have done it a long a time ago but Government does not have money because the budget is too small as locally generated revenue is only about $6 billion.” He told ZBT.
