Writing should offer solutions

| Tuesday January 15, 2008 00:00

The writer intelligently introduces the theme in the opening paragraph but goes on to write on a completely different subject. Even the quotations that are made with reference to the Chobe MP do not back up what was to be the version of the story.

What I seem not to understand is whether the writer wanted to write on the impacts of the recent and on-going floods in the countries mentioned in the article or he wanted to bring forth the impacts of long-overhaul trucks on our roads. Furthermore, it was not clear if the Writer wanted to talk about the long-waiting hours at the ferry and its subsequent effects.

The article failed to propose any substantive measures as to what had to be done to curb an array of problems referred to in the article.
The article only presented a descriptive analysis of the issues and did not convey any practicable solutions to those problems. Unfortunately, this is the kind of writing style that has become synonymous with most of our journalists.

What lessons should we learn from an article like that one, save to know that floods are destroying our roads?
Well, I would like to argue my case on one of the issues raised by the writer and that concerns the state of our roads vis-a-vis environmental factors like floods.

It is of paramount importance that every piece of journalistic literature should strive to address contemporary issues that address issues that affect our people at a local or national level, only can we then begin to talk about other people's problems once ours have been patched.

Unless we really have a lesson to learn from an international perspective and are willing to apply it to our local context! Back to my argument,
I strongly believe that before we blame natural happenings and other factors on their perceived impacts on our roads, we need to consider the way we construct our roads.
Admittedly, I am not a road engineer, but from my limited understanding, certain issues do not warrant some kind of rocket science to understand. It is clear that most of our roads were designed and constructed to poor standards.

Why is it that we still have bad roads even in the driest parts of our country like the Kgalagadi and the Southern part? How many times have we witnessed our roads and bridges being submerged, if not wholly covered by waters?
It makes perfect sense to me that before these trunk roads were constructed, they should have been subjected to some form of environmental impact assessment.

I know that critics would want to prove me wrong by arguing that we did not have provisions for EIA at the time. EIA legislation came into being in 2005 but still, most projects were subjected to EIA on an ad hoc basis since most of them were donor funded.

Those donors, more often than not, had statutory obligations in their native states to carry out some form of EIA. Despite the fact that EIA is seen by some developers as anti-development and a waste of time and resources (after all they only want to make some profit), the contrary continues to prove us wrong.

Towards the end of 2007, most motorists that drove along the A1 road complained of shattered windscreens on their cars, which they alluded to the poor road condition. The Palapye-Martins Drift road was not spared either, if what people said in the Radio Botswana interactive programme was anything to go by.

The Molepolole-Gaborone road at Molapo Crossing is notoriously impassable even with few millimetres of rain and who does not know that the area is a low-lying land and a flood plain for that matter? Just consider the bridge that was constructed there! Do we need someone from outside to spit on us before we can realise these anomalies?  

Ideally, environmental assessment of our roads should have allowed us to reach reasonable conclusions on the nature of the geography where we want to place our developments. Depending on current baseline studies and the results of other phases in the EIA process, we had to arrive at better consent design decisions.

That might entail inter-alia, proposing alternative routes and enhancing the design of our roads in response to the nature of the receiving environment. Whether these issues were captured in the environmental statements, I cannot tell, but the Department of Environmental Affairs as the EIA Lead Agency would be better placed to inform us.

The rather sorry state of affairs of our roads needs an integrated effort from all relevant stakeholders-the Roads Department, Environmental Affairs Department, Consultants doing the assessment and the general public.
It is high time we overhaul our act and ensure that we play our part before we can blame big trucks and floods. I should not be misconstrued to mean that these have no effect in the deterioration of our roads.

The question is, are they the primary cause of the problem to our roads. Let us configure the root cause, as we normally say.
I know that there are other solutions out there and it is up to us to harness all the skills and knowledge and translate those into good use. Once all is said and done, we can remain assured that we made a long term investment irrespective of the costs incurred.

Batsumi Rankokwane
By email