Free State plans to spend R1.8bn fixing roads

The Free State plans to spend R1.8bn on repairing the province’s crumbling, roads that are hampering business and agriculture and placing residents’ lives at risk.

Maqueen Letsoha-Mathae, the province’s new community safety, roads and transport MEC, said she would provide details in her budget speech.  

Premier Mxolisi Dukwana also raised the issue in his state of the province address.  

Letsoha-Mathae said she had visited some of the projects and would monitor progress and the quality of work.

“I want to emphasise the quality and I indicated no service provider should be paid until the department and [stakeholders] who know the work and are dealing with such projects are satisfied the service being rendered is of quality,” she said.

“We have a partnership that needs to be finalised with the Central University of Technology where it will take 600 youths who will be trained and assist in [fixing] potholes.”  

Earlier this year, TimesLIVE reported about the potholed R70 to Rosendal — a town which depends on tourism and agriculture — and the effect on business there.

Bonni Meyer, a Rosendal/Mautse town committee member, said: “Though we are hopeful, we are still putting pressure and we want to know timelines and processes and understand who is getting the tenders and what is happening with the roads until they start work.

“A group of farmers from the area had been filling potholes as much as they could, but they are now all busy on the farms and can’t continue [with the work],” Meyer said.

“They have used their own labour, tractors and trucks to fill the potholes with gravel and soil from their farms. They worked on it for about three weeks and probably managed about 20km, which has helped a lot, but it is not a solution,” she added.

Last year, farmers in the Eastern Free State told TimesLIVE the R708 from Marquard to Hlohlolwane (formerly Clocolan), was in a critical state.

Free State Agriculture commercial manager Jack Armour said at the time there were more than 1,000 potholes on a 30km stretch of the road — one pothole every 29m on average. 

“The road is an important route between Marquard and Clocolan, where there is a lot of beef production,” Armour said.

“A lot of trucks use that road ... is it is one of the routes that takes people from the Lesotho border post at Ficksburg to mines in Welkom.”  

TimesLIVE