Mozambique: Traffic resumes along Tete-Manica road | AIM report – Watch

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Mozambique: Traffic resumes along Tete-Manica road | AIM report – Watch

7:33 CAT | 20 Feb 2023

Screen grab: Miramar

The road between the central Mozambican provinces of Manica and Tete was reopened to heavy vehicles on Friday afternoon.

This road, National Highway Seven (EN7), is also the main road that links the port of Beira to landlocked countries such as Malawi and Zambia.

Traffic along the road was interrupted when, on Thursday morning, heavy rains caused the collapse of a bridge over the Nhamucute river, in the municipality of Catandica, in the Manica district of Barue.

READ: Mozambique: Crater cuts EN7

The storm destroyed the structure of the bridge, and left a crater more than five metres wide and three metres deep. The National Roads Administration (ANE) quickly established a diversion, but it could only be used by light vehicles.

However, by late Friday afternoon, repairs had been carried out that allowed heavy trucks to use the road, albeit in small numbers. The Manica provincial ANE delegate, Moises Dzimba, told reporters that limited traffic of heavy vehicles is being allowed, to ensure that the hundreds of trucks held up on both sides of the break in the road can continue their journey.

While some trucks are allowed through, work continues for more definitive repairs. “The idea is that, even if we have a lot more rain, the road will not be interrupted again in the same place”, said Dzimba.

“It’s raining heavily”, he continued. “Even so, the contractor has been working to place sand and stone, which helped reduce the period which had been established, which was two days. This is the first phase of the work, the phase of an emergency intervention. The conclusion will follow which could facilitate definitively the free circulation of people and goods”.

Meanwhile, tropical cyclone Freddy is continuing to move almost due west across the Indian Ocean. On its current course, it will make landfall on the coast of Madagascar, just south of the capital, Antananarivo, on 22 February, with a wind speed of 80 knots (148 kilometres per hour).

READ: Mozambique: INAM issues warning about Cyclone Freddy

It could cross central Madagascar, and enter the Mozambique Channel on 23 February. Since cyclones reduce in intensity over land, it is forecast that by then the wind speed will have dropped to 45 knots.

Once in the Channel, Freddy could pick up speed again. as it heads towards the southern Mozambican coast.