By Thupeyo Muleya
Beitbridge Town Council has completed construction of state-of-the-art truck port that seeks to decongest the border post and the central business district of heavy vehicles.
Civil works began last year and the truck port has the capacity to handle over 200 trucks at any given time.
The traffic passing through Beitbridge border post border daily is heavy and at peak can surpass 3 000 vehicles.
In an interview yesterday, the Town Secretary, Dr Sipho Singo, said the truck port was racking in an average of R50 000 per month.
He said they were working on resurfacing the ground in the truck port arena.
"The truck inn is doing very well — we have managed to flush out all the heavy vehicles which were causing unnecessary congestion around the town and border post.
"In fact we are getting an average of R50 000 from the truck port and we are looking at interlocking it before the end of this year.
"You will realise that this is an international border which has high volumes of traffic and hence we need to control the movement especially commercial vehicles.
"In the near future we want to attract the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority to do the customs clearance from the truck port so as to avoid the congestion at the border post.
"Another advantage is that they can twin the clearance of trucks and imported vehicles from one point since the truck port and the Export Processing Zone are close to each other.
"We have managed to buy some earth moving equipment, which will be delivered anytime this month and these will be used to resurface and maintain some of our damaged roads.
"The road network system is a very important aspect of our development programme because of the nature of traffic we handle as a border town," he said.
He added that they would also be installing traffic lights at seven strategic points across the town to effectively control the movement of both human and vehicle traffic.
Dr Singo said they would spend US$7000 on the traffic lighting project.
He said apart from traffic lights, the local authority was about to complete the installation of six tower lights around the town’s crime hot spots.
"As a new developing council, we have to work very hard to spruce up the town’s outlook since it is the preface to anyone coming into the country through South Africa.
"We also want to improve on street lighting and security for both the residents and other travellers. We expect the tower lights to be fully functional by the end of this month.
"To ensure that almost of the areas around the town are safe, we have cleared the bushes as a starting point," said Dr Singo.
The town secretary said they were in the midst of courting more private partners to implement other developmental project as part of their public private partnership initiatives.
Beitbridge border post was granted town status in 2006 at the instigation of the National Economic Development Priority Programme (NEDPP).
published by the Herald 07 December 2010
www.herald.co.zw
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