Limpopo Public Works, Roads and Infrastructure MEC Nkakareng Rakgoale this week attended the sodturning ceremony for the construction of a R127-million bridge over the Steelpoort river, at Ga-Malekana.
The sodturning ceremony follows the successful signing of a memorandum of agreement (MoA) by Roads Agency Limpopo (RAL) and eight mining companies operating within the Sekhukhune district municipality.
Under the terms of the MoA, the new bridge will be built, while the existing single-lane D2219 road will be rehabilitated. The project is scheduled for completion in July 2024.
Local community members and small, medium-sized and microenterprises are expected to benefit from the project.
“The department and RAL are prioritising some roads in terms of re-graveling and the patching of potholes.
“We also hope that the national government’s declaration of a [flood-related] National State of Disaster will enable us to speedily intervene to repair damaged bridges, as well as identified critical roads [that need to be repaired],” said Rakgoale.
She noted that collaboration between the government and the private sector was important to improve service delivery.
About 13 000 km of road in the province have yet to be tarred and more bridges need to be built.
In addition, there are dozens of kilometres of road that still need to be upgraded and, for this to happen, the MEC said RAL required about R138-billion in funding.
“Our agency RAL is also hard at work upgrading and doing preventive maintenance to the roads in the province. I want to announce that RAL has just appointed 41 constant engineers and about 100 contractors and consultants for upgrading, rehabilitation and designs of our roads,” she said.