By Dixon Bwalya-

Ndola city is unique in a number of aspects compared to other towns and cities in Zambia, these aspects may, therefore require special attention in as far as planning and management of this Copperbelt city is concerned.
The special planning and management would benecessary in order to effectively respond to emergencies as well as reduce inconvenience caused on both Ndola residents as well as visitors to Ndola.
The city of Ndola is the base for INDENI Oil Refinery with the attendant infrastructure to accommodate storage tanks for crude oil and various finished products of jet fuel, petrol, diesel and paraffin.
The Tanzania- Zambia Mafuta Pipeline (TAZAMA) which transports crude oil from Dar es Salaam has its terminus located in Ndola’s industrial area.
Ndola has witnessed in recent past a proliferation of fuel filling stations with a number of them being located in Ndola South.
The city of Ndola can also boast of “owning” an international airport even though the airport is located fairly close to residential areas of Itawa, Ndeke and Mackenzie.
The city of Ndola is further blessed with the natural feature in form of Kafubu River and the development of the city has resulted in the river dividing the city into Ndola North and Ndola South with the Industrial Area, which includes INDENI Oil Refinery and the airport being located in Ndola South.
The Local, District and Provincial Administrative offices as well as the two major hospitals comprising of Ndola Central Hospital and Arthur Davison Children’s Hospital are located in Ndola Northern part of the city.
Like any town or city town planning and management would involve putting measures in place to facilitate effective response to any emergencies and also bearing in mind that possibilities of emergencies are increased by the presence of an oil refinery within the jurisdiction of Ndola.
Yes catastrophic industrial fires involving oil refineries do not happen regularly mainly because of the high standards of fire prevention tools that are put in place in such factories but industrial fires do happen once in a while and once they happen fires involving oil refineries can be extremely devastating.
Now the layout of Ndola is such that if you are coming from Kabwe direction and you have no business in Ndola one can bypass Ndola and use the Masangano/Fisenge bypass.
One can now avoid passing through the Ndola Central Business District by using the Lubuto/Twapia bypass and later join the Ndola-Kitwe dual carriage.
For the rest, movement from the southern part of Ndola to the northern part of Ndola is by two options, one option is to use the Kabwe road which passes near the Golf Club and the second option is by using the Dag Drive through the under bridge.
In other words should a fire break out at INDENI Oil Refinery or there is an emergence to be attended to at Ndola International Airport these are the only two available roads to use to access or exit the southern part into the northern part of Ndola.
Again should Ndola need assistance to effectively contain an emergence the quickest response would come from the nearest towns which are all located in the northern direction of Ndola.
Ndola, like most other towns, has in recent times witnessed a tremendous increase in the number of vehicles on roads and the resultant traffic jams during normal working hours.
Even without responses to emergencies Ndola has of late experienced significant traffic jams on these two access roads caused by increased motor vehicle population, broken down vehicles blocking access roads, pot holes on roads and flooding especially on the Dag Drive and the under bridge just after the Kafubu River.
Ndola City Council recently successfully attended to and repaired pot holes on the Kabwe road just before the rail crossing and that, somewhat, helped to speed up the movement of vehicles on this part of the road.
The problem seems to be with the under bridge access road. For a number of years and especially during the rainy season two things happen on an annual basis; the roads tends to get flooded soon after a heavy down pour and large pot holes tend to rapidly develop making passage difficult leading to stagnation of motor vehicle movement.
Ndola City Council has year in year out failed to resolve this despite the regular road closures and deviations to facilitate road repairs by patching up pot holes which soon re-appear.
The landscape of Ndola is generally such that the gradient slopes towards Kafubu River and the initial planners of the town of Ndola laid out the town such that storm water drainage would be directed towards Kafubu River to capitalise on gravity to move the storm water into the river.
The underground and surface storm drains along such roads as President Avenue and Moffat Roads were designed and laid out to discharge into the river, there are huge storm drains near Chimanga Changa Milling meant to take storm water into the river at the point where the under bridge is located.
There are several storm water inlets meant to receive water on road edges again to discharge in the river around the under bridge point of location.
Since the flooding of the under bridge and damage to the road at this point occurs during the rainy season and the fact that there is presence of water even when there is no rain it is logical to conclude that storm water drainage has something to with this annual occurrence.
The strength of the road is directly related to the quality of the sub base of the road while the asphalt finish is meant to stop or minimize the ingress of storm water to the sub base which would result in undermining the integrity of the sub base and consequently the road itself.
Repairs involving replacement of the asphalt finish without attending to the sub base of the road is like treating symptoms without attending to the root cause of the problem.
There are no phantoms at the under bridge that dig up the road soon after repairs; the damage is probably caused by water coming from the sub structure probably due to the ineffective storm water drainage at this point because of blockage of storm drains due to siltation resulting from long time poor maintenance.
Part of the solution would probably involve clearing and repairing the entire storm water network or other less timid approaches than the current fidgeting and resource wasting approach which at the end does not produce any tangible results but this may require a significant capital outlay which may not be available with the local authority.
As attempts to solve the under bridge puzzle are being made other options to increase access points from the southern part of Ndola should be considered.
The solution will not only improve response time in case of emergencies but will also reduce the frustration and inconvenience caused to drivers of motor vehicles.
Moffat Road is the road that runs from Broadway and crosses President Avenues, this is the same road that serves Savoy Hotel and TAZAMA House and makes a corner to service Chimanga Changa.
If this road was to be extended to cross the railway line and linked to the Depot Road that serves Kafubu Water Treatment Plant as well as ZESCO offices it could easily provide an alternative access into and from the Ndola Central Business District and probably reduce traffic jams.
The affected strip of land has currently no serious development in existence. Just a thought. FOR COMMENTS 0955 789960