The Sunday News
Dumisani Nsingo, Senior Business Reporter
A BULAWAYO-BASED property developing company Homeseekers Incorporation (Inc) has entered into a partnership with one of South Africa’s leading engineering and construction firms, Poly Roads for the supply of the latest and low-cost road construction materials in the country.
A division of the property developing company, Road Chem brokered a deal to be the South African firm’s country agent for the provision of low-cost sealed road construction materials late last year.
Two weeks ago, the company’s engineers and technical team carried out a two-hundred-metre road construction demonstration at Bulawayo’s Kelvin North industrial area’s Market Road.
Homeseekers chief executive officer, Mr Mkhululi Nyathi said the material that was coming from South Africa would reduce construction costs by between 30 and 50 percent.
“Some of the equipment reduce the number of supporting aggregate layers for cement modified or stabilised flexible and rigid road designs and thereby substantially reducing construction costs by 30 to 50 percent,” said Mr Nyathi.
Mr Nyathi said the new material will modify the country’s roads and help the development of the economy.
“We believe the product will alleviate the poor state of most of our rural roads in terms of improvement and giving them a longer lifespan than what is being attained now. Apart from prolonged lifespan of up to five years before one can come and seal with tar, it suppresses dust. The issue of potholes that you see after regrading will be a thing of the past while maintenance costs are extremely reduced thus meaning the budget of doing the roads is also drastically curtailed with this technology,” he said.
Mr Nyathi said Road Chem has lined up a number of marketing strategies aimed at promoting the new road construction technology throughout the country.
“We are targeting any road, road authorities and land developers who are doing land servicing and construction of roads from scratch. In terms of the roll up plan we are selling this product as an application product so that anybody interested in it can buy from us and we do what we call skills transfer on how it is applied for road construction,” he said.
However, Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister Dr Joram Gumbo could not comment much about the development stating that he was yet to be informed but hinted that its concept was likely to improve the condition of roads especially in rural areas.
“I can’t comment much on that because I am not aware of it. What they should have done is to approach us (ministry) as the road authority, which is basically the norm and done the demo. As it is we don’t know the benefits that it will come with to the people and the country but it sounds good. If it is something that would be good for our roads especially the rural roads it will be appreciated,” Dr Gumbo said.
However, Mr Nyathi said the Director in the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development seconded engineers from the ministry’s provincial office to witness the demo.
