People driving through the Grahamstown Industrial Area during the past month have been puzzled by the sight of around 20 brand new road construction vehicles standing idle at the Department of Roads and Public Works in Grahamstown.
People driving through the Grahamstown Industrial Area during the past month have been puzzled by the sight of around 20 brand new road construction vehicles standing idle at the Department of Roads and Public Works in Grahamstown.
They are not in use because they are not yet licensed, although 10 of the machines will be brought to Kenton-on-Sea on trucks for a bridge-opening ceremony on the R72, the coastal road between East London and Port Elizabeth, today.
The MEC of Transport Roads and Public Works,Thandiswa Marawu, will officially receive the road-construction equipment, which is going to be distributed mostly to the Alfred Nzo and OR Thambo regions for road construction and gravelling teams in these areas.
The equipment arrived by boat in Port Elizabeth harbour, but is being stored in Grahamstown and Graaff-Reinet because these are the only two construction depots in the Eastern Cape, said provincial Deputy Director-general of Roads and Public Works, Nkululeko Poya.
The machinery needs to be inspected at the construction depots before it can be licensed. Poya said this was likely to be done by the end of the month. Altogether 54 road construction vehicles, known as the "yellow fleet", were bought by the department as part of its recapitalisation programme which is "a three-year rollout plan… for buying new plant to rebuild our internal capacity."
"Plant" is the industry term for road-construction equipment. The yellow fleet consists of 18 graders, three dump trucks, five tip trucks, 14 water tankers, eight TLBs (tractor loader backhoes), four loaders, and two transporters, costing more than R26 million.
According to Poya, the first batch of machines arrived in Grahamstown during the last week of February.
