Road that does not receive periodic treatment is sure to die’- reads a facebook post on the Ethiopian Road Fund’s page. It is to mean that side by side with the construction of new roads, upgrading and maintaining existing ones would pay-off hugely.
One of the critical bottlenecks of the road sector was unable to carry out timely maintenance services. Due to this, import-export corridors as well as other highways had been in poor conditions – incurring additional time and cost on users, not to mention the ensuing problem on public health.
The main contributing factor to this is lack of reliable finance to accomplish road maintenance tasks, Ethiopian Roads Authority Public Relations Director Samson Wondimu told The Ethiopian Herald.
But since the coming into effect of Ethiopian Roads Fund (ERF), the problem has acutely been mitigated, he added. “ERA has now reliable financial source to timely undertake maintenance works.”
To him, most import-export roads that were in bad shape previously are now giving better services.
The preferred strategic approach to road financing, according to the Maintenance Action Plan (MAP) of ERF, is to start action on partial cost recovery base, targeting on routine maintenance cost recovery and to proceed to heavy maintenance cost recovery. Road users and other financial sources are the backbone of this effort.
For instance, during the last six months of the current Ethiopian year, ERF collected over one billion Birr with the majority coming from tax levied on vehicles’ fuel, oil and grease as well as annual driving license renewal fees and road users, among others–as revealed by ERF Director General Rashid Mohamed.
Of this amount, over 376 million Birr goes to ERA; 99 million Birr and 25 million Birr have been directed to the coffers of states’ and towns’ road authorities respectively, he indicated.
In concerning to budget distribution and share, he further stressed that 65 percent is to ERA, 25 percent to states’ road construction and 10 percent to city administrations.
ERA Comm. Director Samson Wondimu
Hence, over 9,333.37 Kms roads have been repaired within the stated period.
The results of these efforts go without saying, but some of them could be protecting the roads from further damages and improving public health [as road traffic relating casualties could be kept at a minimum.].
Designing appropriate road maintenance policy and strategy, in general, is a prerequisite for the development of a healthy and dependable road traffic environment to a country, he noted, adding: “That is exactly what the government has put in place.”
Nowadays, the cost of operating heavy trucks has been cut to the minimum due to the approach Ethiopia has adopted. This has a tangible impact on import-export businesses in particular and investment activities as a whole.
To further accomplish tasks relating to road maintenance, ERF is looking into reform actions, the director highlighted, explaining that the reform is being carried out on four basic building blocks of the Road Management Initiative (RMI) are: the aspects of ownership, management, financing and responsibility on roads.