FCC to construct roads with storm water drains

Pini Bothoko | Tuesday January 19, 2016 14:34

The Mayor, Sylvia Muzila, told Mmegi that the council intended to upgrade some roads to dual carriageways, and with storm water drainage system. The roads include Marang Road, Guy Street Road, Boipuso Road, Kazungula Road, Gemme Drive and New Bridge Road.

Muzila said the flooding that usually took place during the rainy season made it imperative to ensure that roads have stormwater drainage systems. She said floods pose danger to the residents: both pedestrians and motorists. Areas that occasionally experience floods when it rains are Block One, Area W, Riverview residence, Kgaphamadi, Maipaafela, Ntshe, Satellite and Somerset.

The mayor said the city also had sewage related problems that worsened during floods.

“Floods are risky because they happen in our homes where children play, along the road where it can expose danger to motorists, it destroys infrastructure as well as people’s properties,” she said.

Years ago, the Francistown City Council came up with a storm water drainage master plan that was never implemented because of shortage of money that was experienced during the global economic recession that started in 2008.

Thuto Obakeng, the city council’s chief civil and mechanical engineer, told Mmegi that the storm water drainage master plan was divided into work areas that would enable the council to implement construction in phases, taking into consideration priority areas that the council would make.

Obakeng said the council had a P2 billion storm water drainage master plan project that was once included in NDP 10 but was shelved due to lack of funds.

He said that the project was one of council’s priorities, stating that due to shortage of funds the council has proposed for it (the project) to be done in phases as a carryover project in NDP 11. 

“We have requested for P50 million to implement the first phase of the master plan whose design has been completed and already paid for,” he said.

The only thing that they might do is to re-visit the plan and comply with the recent city’s developments like construction of the spaghetti road. Obakeng said with efforts of turning Francistown into an investment hub, the council did not want problems associated with floods because they were adverse to the economy of the city.