[ad_1]
The Minister of Public Works, Housing and Water Resources, Carlos Mesquita, announced on August 23 that the public tender for hiring a contractor to rehabilitate National Highway 1 (N1) will be launched after several delays due to the needs of the World Bank.
This is the implementation of the first phase of the N1 rehabilitation project, which has a total length of 1,100 kilometers (Km) and has about five sections, namely between Metoro-Pemba (94 km) in Cabo Delgado province; Gorongosa-Caya Section 1 (0-84 km), Gorongosa-Caya Section 2 (84 – 168 km) and Inchope-Gorongosa (70 km) in Chimuara Sofala province; Nicoadara Section 1 (0-88 km) and Chimuara-Nicoadara Section 2 (88-176 km), located in Zambezia province, with a rehabilitation and maintenance work budget of US$400 million.
Carlos Mesquita disclosed this in Inchope, Manica province, as part of his monitoring tour along the N1 road, which starts from Maputo and includes Chimoio, Inchope, Gorongosa, Caia, Quelimane, Mocuba, Guruè, Maige, Lioma, Malema, Nampula and Angoche.
As explained by the official, the launch of this competition is the result of two years of extensive work, approved on August 19 by the World Bank, the financier of the project. In this way, the government hopes to receive proposals from interested contractors on November 1 of this year, after the announcement of the competition, in the media on August 23: “This is a ten-year project, two years for rehabilitation and eight years for restoration and maintenance. We plan to launch three or four other competitions shortly thereafter, by December of this year”, said Carlos Mesquita.
In another development, the Minister mentioned the support provided by the Saudi Fund for Development to the government in the continuation of the hiring of a consultant who will design the execution project of the work and prepare the documentation for a major intervention in the sections of Benfica / Zimpeto and Bairro 3 de Fevereiro / Incoluane.
“The project has a total length of 27 kilometres, of which 10 kilometres correspond to the widening of the Benfica/Zimpeto section from two to four lanes, and the remaining 17 kilometres correspond to the rehabilitation of the section from Bairro 3 de Fevereiro to Incoluane”, he explained.
It is worth noting that the overall budget for the N1 rehabilitation project is US$850 million, of which US$400 million is for the rehabilitation planned in the first phase of the project. Regarding his visit to the N1, Carlos Mesquita explained that this was a way he found to monitor the work being done along several roads in the country, as he thought it would be useful to go to the site to know what would happen if a situation occurred.
“There are about 30,000 km of graded roads in the country, of which 28% are paved, equivalent to about 8,500 km. Of these, about 60% require regular maintenance for various reasons. First of all, according to the logic of road management, five years after construction or rehabilitation, depending on their level of wear and tear, intervention is needed to increase their lifespan. But we also face the challenge of climate change, which shows that in some places the roads are at a low level and need to be raised, which is what we are doing in our reconstruction projects”, he concluded.
[ad_2]
Source link
