Dineo delays completion of �Spaghetti� junction
Lebogang Mosikare | Friday March 31, 2017 16:42
The chief roads engineer (North East), Letlhogela Radipata revealed this during a stakeholder consultative meeting about the Spaghetti project at Thapama Hotel on Wednesday.
Radipata said the tentative date for the completion of the Spaghetti is end of May although it may be finished before that date.
President Ian Khama had said in his State of Nation Address late last year that the interchange would be completed in February.
The completion date was further postponed to April by the Minister of Transport and Communication Kitso Mokaila who said that the delay of the completion of the project was caused by downpours that the city experienced for some weeks in January.
“If the heavy rainfall continues it will slow down the progress of the Thapama interchange, which can lead to an extension of the completion date,” he said then. Radipata told the attendants, mostly business people from various sectors and other stakeholders, that they aim to protect and minimise inconvenience caused to entrepreneurs and motorists.
He conceded that the construction of the spaghetti has negatively affected the business community since it was started in February 2015.
The project was projected to be completed by August 2016 by missed numerous completion dates. The authorities stated that unforeseen circumstances like the relocation of services belonging to the Botswana Telecommunication Corporations (BTC), Botswana Fibre Networks (BoFiNet) and Water Utilities Corporation (WUC) among other factors led the project to miss its initial completion date.
Radipata said they are going to close three junctions (fire station, one between the University of Botswana and Nyangabgwe Referral Hospital and the Somerset East junction) next week to allow for the smooth completion of the project. Works on the junctions, Radipata said, will be completed in three to four weeks subject to no unforeseen circumstances cropping up.
He stated that they are going to open one of the carriageways under the spaghetti to ease road congestion during these last stages of the construction of the interchange junction, which is 93.7% complete, and within budget.
A consultant from Pula Consultancy, Koobakile Sabokone, said traffic flow in the city would be temporarily affected by the closure of the three junctions.
“The main purpose of the closing of the junctions is to allow the constructor to continue with its work without any hindrance and to keep the public safe from anything undesirable that may occur… All road users will be affected by this temporary closure of junctions but arrangements will be made to ease movement of traffic for the public,” Sabokone said.
Although the interchange junction was constructed to ease the flow of traffic in the city, it has attracted criticism from some quarters.
A representative of the University of Botswana (UB) campus in the city, Olebile Kuswane, said their buildings shook and ended up cracking when the construction company used heavy machinery during the initial construction phase of the junction.
She asked if there were any measures in place to rectify the problems caused by the use of heavy machinery on their property.
In response, Kuswane said he was told that before the project started, the department of roads and the constructor went along the project alignment for distance of 200 metres in diameter and took pictures of all properties along the project alignment.
“If some cracks had developed after the completion of project due to the construction of project but were not present when the project commenced, the constructor will compensate the owners of the affected properties accordingly,” said Radipata.
The city clerk Mompati Seleka pleaded with all stakeholders affected by the construction of the Spaghetti junction to bear with the constructor saying projects of these magnitude come with their pros and cons.
He said the project was expected to address issue of unemployment in the city and position the city into a vibrant city in line with its vision of 2022. “This project is an important territorial marketing tool for the city and unearths a lot of potential for the city,” said Seleka.