Harare — WITHIN days of introducing toll fees on the country's major highways in August this year, more than US$500 000 had been raised from motorists, specifically to rehabilitate Zimbabwe's deplorable roads.

Since then, the State-run Zimbabwe National Road Administration (ZINARA) has collected over US$3 million, part of which has been used to patch up much of the potholed highways.

Despite ZINARA's frantic efforts to repair the country's dangerous highways, the road network has essentially remained a death trap.

Roads are normally designed to last for 20 years, but many of the country's roads are beyond their designed lifespan and urgently need rehabilitation.

Following years of systematic neglect due to shortages of funds, equipment, transport, fuel and labour, the rehabilitation of Zim-babwe's roads will not be as simple as it looks for a number of reasons.

Amos Makarau, the acting secretary in the Ministry of Transport, is on record saying 30 percent of the country's 4 668 km of regional and primary roads require rehabilitation, while the remainder needs periodic maintenance. Go-vernment estimates indicate that it costs roughly US$600 000 to rehabilitate a kilometre of tarred road. What this means is that at least US$1,8 billion would be required to rehabilitate just about 3 000km.

Simple arithmetic will therefore show that the US$3,1 million collected by ZINARA in the third quarter of the year is just a drop in the ocean -- it is barely enough to rehabilitate five kilometres.

The dualisation of the Harare-Beitbridge-Chirundu Road alone -- one of southern Africa's busiest highways -- would need at least US$1 billion, which the government does not have at the moment.

Then there is the usual red tape and political interference the country must deal with in order to speed up road maintenance and upgrade.

The Harare-Beitb-ridge-Chirundu Road for example, has been a victim of needless government delays.

Some years back, a tender to upgrade the road under a Build Operate and Transfer (BOT) arrangement was awarded to Zim Highways, a consortium of five local companies, but the issue never proceeded beyond the tender stage due to bureaucratic bungling.

The BOT agreement, according to the Ministry of Transport, is now being revised by the government after which it will be checked again by the Infrastructure Development Bank of Zimbabwe, which is working with a South African partner to facilitate the implementation of the project.

"When approved then it (agreement) will be ready for signing by the Ministry of Transport, Communication and Infrastructural Development and all interested parties," the Ministry said in a statement.

When? It's anyone's guess.

Last month, Nicholas Goche, the Transport Minister, drew the nation's attention to yet another problem frustrating efforts to mend the deteriorating road infrastructure. Goche said there were too many mouths that were feeding from the toll fees.

For instance, ZI-NARA, the sole authority mandated to look after the country's roads, received US$3,1 million from the fees raised so far from the tollgates. The Zimba-bwe Revenue Authority took 10 percent of the fees as administration costs.

Several other government agencies are also benefiting from the funds.

In a recent report, the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Transport and Infra-structural De-velopment, said it would be impossible to adequately address the current road maintenance challenges using the little revenue from the fuel levy, transit fee, overloading fines and abnormal load fees alone.

"However, it is observed that if augmented with the other road user fees, that is the road access fee and with proper management of the newly introduced tolling fee, then the country's roads should be improved," the committee noted in its report.

The Committee recommended that at least road shoulders on all major roads be constructed immeditaely and fences be urgently erected along all trunk routes to keep animals from straying onto the highways as a short term measure to reduce the carnage on the country's roads.