By PERPETUAL SICHIKWENKWE –
THE Road Development Agency (RDA) has expressed concern over the quarrying activities closer to roads because this destroys and causes damage to road infrastructure.
RDA Board chairperson?, Samuel Mukupa has since urged villagers to desist from digging building sand closer the Kawambwa-Mushota – Luwingu Road in Luapula Province because it leaves holes and eventually destroys the road.
The Kawambwa – Mushota – Luwingu Road is undergoing periodic maintenance, upgrading and rehabilitation works but villagers in some areas are digging sand closer to the foundation of the road.
Mr Mukupa appealed to villagers in Mushota to take good care of road infrastructure on which the Government was spending huge sums of money.
He said it was worrying to see villagers do quarrying and heap the sand closer to the road where works were undergoing .
Mr Mukupa said this on Friday when he toured the Kawambwa- Mushota- Luwingu Road with RDA chief executive officer Kanyuka Mumba and other RDA officials.
He said the road, which has three intervention works of periodic maintenance, upgrading and rehabilitation under a stretch of 159 kilometres was a gift from the Government to the people? in the area and should be kept well.
Mr Mukupa told journalists that ?it was the Government’s envisaged view that people would take care of infrastructure because they were the main beneficiaries of such projects.
He found heaps of sand at Chilubula which villagers dig from near the road and heap it for building purposes closer to the road.
Mr Mukupa said the digging and heaping of sand impeded progress of the works and eventually damaged the road.
He said that when soils were washed away, it resulted in floods which damaged the road and defeated the whole purpose of constructing it.
“They are digging and taking the sand closer to the foundation of the road. At the end of the day when we have unprecedented levels of floods around this place there is disaster because a lot of soils are washed away” Mr Mukupa said.