Work on Maputo-Catembe bridge in danger of halting

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Work on Maputo-Catembe bridge in danger of halting

7:15 CAT | 22 Nov 2017

O País

Construction of the suspension bridge over the Bay of Maputo, linking the centre of the city to the outer district of Katembe, could grind to a halt because the Maputo Municipal Council seems unwilling to remove a couple of hundred stallholders from the Nwankakana informal market who are blocking the northern access road to the bridge.

Cited in Tuesday’s issue of the Maputo daily “Noticias”, the chairperson of Maputo-Sul, the public company in charge of the bridge and its associated road network, Silva Magaia, said that his company has neither the power nor the legal force to demolish the Nwankakana market. The problem must therefore be managed by the Municipal Council.

“If this impasse with the Nwankakana stallholders prevails”, he warned, “the work will have to stop. We don’t have the power to remove them. What we have done is point out the problem to the municipal authorities, indicating the implications this has for the contract and on the deadlines for completing the job”.

Maputo-Sul had hoped that the bridge would be “a Christmas present” for Mozambicans, but the initial deadline for completing the job by the end of December can no longer be met.

Efforts were now being made to ensure that the bridge and its access roads will be completed in the first quarter of 2018. “That’s what our workers are working for, working at the weekends and working over public holidays”, said Magaia. “Let’s see if we manage to complete the bridge in the first months of 2018, so that it’s ready before the celebrations of Mozambican independence (25 June)”.

“Right now our major concern is linking the northern access to the existing road network. We are making constant efforts to persuade the Nwankakana stallholders to let us work on that land”, he added.

The stallholders have no legal right to the land, which belongs to the municipality. The Council has offered them all space in a new municipal market, but they are refusing to budge from their current chaotic stalls, unless they are paid compensation.

They are demanding compensation of between 195,000 and 300,000 meticais (between 3,200 and 4,900 US dollars) per stall depending on size. Both the Council and Maputo-Sul regard these figures as absurdly high.

“The sums they are proposing are extremely high. What is the legal instrument and the criterion they are using to advance such sums?”, asked Magaia. “We are dealing with public accounts, we are making payments from the state budget, and doing this doesn’t depend on the will of any single individual”.

The initial cost of the project was 785 million dollars. This include the bridge and its access roads, the 187 kilometre road from Katembe to Ponta do Ouro, on the border with the South African province of Kwazalu-Natal, and the 63 kilometre road between the towns of Boane and Bela Vista.

The contractor is the China Roads and Bridges Corporation (CRBC), which will certainly demand additional payment for extra time spent on concluding the bridge through no fault of its own.

Source: AIM