Pretoria - The multimillion rand projects for upgrading two provincial roads in the City of Tshwane have failed to meet deadlines for completion partly owing to illegal encroachments on the road reserves.
This was according to Gauteng Department of Transport and Logistics MEC, Kedibone Diale-Tlabela, who conducted an oversight visit at road construction sites.
The R300 million project at the K69 road known as Solomon Mahlangu Drive in Mamelodi was launched in 2019 and it was envisaged to be completed by August 2021.
However, to date, work to expand the number of lanes of the existing carriageway is still under way. Delays were also attributed to Covid-19 restrictions.
The road stretches almost 12km in the north-easterly direction linking Lynnwood Road to the K54 in Mamelodi.
The upgrading of the road K69 was informed by the need to ease traffic congestion during peak hours.
Part of the project included covering about nine kilometres, stretching from Road R104 to K54 in the township.
Progress was also hampered at the busy K54 or Tsamaya Road in Mamelodi, where the Gauteng provincial government injected at least R440m on a road construction project.
The 2018 project was expected to take 30 months for constructing a north-bound dual carriageway, two bridges over the railway line, cycle and pedestrian paths as well as taxi lay-bys. It is, however, not yet completed.
Tsamaya Road was expected to function as a catalyst for the stimulation of socio-economic development in Mamelodi and surrounding areas through the provision of a modern road network.
Diale-Tlabela’s visit to the projects was to assess construction progress at the identified sites and look deeper into issues hampering completion of the projects.
The projects, it was said, were also marred by disruptions, formal and informal businesses operating along the construction route as well as community protests over service delivery issues amongst other factors.
Diale-Tlabela said of concern to her was that the delayed projects forced the government to go over budget, which constituted a financial irregularity.
“K69 has been delayed and it is taking from the public purse and it is because somebody didn’t do their job to ensure that we appoint the correct service provider,” she said.
She said the service provider appointed under-quoted the work and had to beg for more finances after realising that the expenses on-site were higher than was anticipated.
She was told that the project was left with almost 15 to 20% to finish.
Regarding Tsamaya Road, Diale-Tlabela said the main contractor terminated the contract due to the difficulty posed by people who encroached the road reserves.
“We are calling upon our communities to please not hijack land to rent it over to non-nationals who are stopping us from continuing because they believe they have rights and that we need to find space for them and the municipality does not have resources to accommodate and relocate them,” she said.
She expressed concern that the government was not strong with its project management.
“We don’t have time. We have only 13 months now to finish our projects,” she said.
Pretoria News