Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
20 October 2008
Maputo — The Samora Machel bridge, over the Zambezi river in the western Mozambican city of Tete, is in serious danger, reports Monday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias".
For the past fortnight, it has only been possible to use one of the two lanes of the bridge. Since the bridge is a crucial part of the highway between Malawi and Zimbabwe, which runs through the middle of Tete province, restrictions on traffic lead to long queues of vehicles at either end of the bridge.
Excessive traffic, not envisaged when the bridge was built in the early 1970s, has led to cables breaking. The damage is patched up, but new cables are not installed.
Between 600 and 800 trucks cross the bridge every day. They carry loads of up to 60 tonnes - or possibly even more. For the weighbridge, which should stop overloading, has not been fully operational since the year 2000.
So nobody knows the exact weight of the trucks using the bridge. The National Road Administration (ANE) is aware of the problem, and it has been mentioned in ANE reports on the state of the bridge.
The body in charge of maintaining the bridge is the Tete branch of the state-owned Roads and Bridges Building and Maintenance Company (ECMEP). But ECMEP complains that it is short of equipment and of funds, even to pay wages to its workers. "Noticias" reports that ECMEP is unable to carry out daily inspections of the bridge, because it has no means of access to the upper cables, and because the inspection trolleys themselves are in a very poor state of conservation.
Despite the restrictions on goods vehicles, the paper notes that at night and at the weekend two heavy trucks can be seen on the bridge at the same time.
The ANE acknowledges that lack of regular maintenance, and the delays in the promised complete rehabilitation of the bridge, are posing an extremely high safety risk.
A source in the ECMEP management told the paper "the situation is going from bad to worse. We don't have any material, and much less the money to buy any equipment".
"ECMEP is facing a financial crisis, and we can't even guarantee the payment of wages", the source added. "The ANE is not helping. There is a team working on the bridge, headed by one basic technician, doing the impossible to ensure that the bridge can be used".
The Tete provincial director of public works, Brito Soca, recognised that ECMEP is going through serious financial and technical difficulties, which contributes to the poor maintenance of the bridge.
He said, however, that a public tender was launched in March to select a contractor to maintain the bridge, and the currently the legal procedures are under way to finalise the appointment of this contractor.
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