Residents of Moteti in Mpumalanga are happy with the work done by (SANRAL) South African National Roads Agency Limited on the R573 road between Moteti and Marble Hall.
Residents said they will no longer experience gravel road, potholes, killer road, and sharing the road with the animals.
The R573 road between Moteti and Marble Hall Road project started in February 2021 and was completed in February 2024.
South African National Roads Agency Limited (SANRAL) installed lights, builds fences, build pavement and also put warnings for safety of the motorist and pedestrians.
The R573 Moloto Road Corridor has been declared as a dangerous road.
About 50,000 passengers use this route on a daily basis and is notorious for claiming lives in accidents.
In July 2015, the Limpopo and Mpumalanga Road departments handed over their parts of the road to the South African National Roads Agency (SANRAL).
In 2019, Gauteng Province officially handed over its portion to SANRAL, meaning that the entire route from Pretoria to Marble Hall is now the responsibility of SANRAL.
SANRAL started the upgrade of the route in 2016 and is expected to finish the Moloto Road Upgrade Project in 2025.
The upgrades include changing certain intersections into roundabouts as well as upgrading the carriageway from Siyabuswa to Marble Hall.
There are also considerations to add a railway following this route.
Speaking to resident Jonas Mashaba told the Tshwane Talks that this road used to be gravel and was in bad condition, motorist was always complaining that this road used to damage their vehicles, there were lots of accidents in this road and many lives were lost in this road.
“We promised we will look after the road and take care of it, and we will make sure that community don’t vandalize it or burn Tyres and we will have peace of mind.
We are very happy that the province appointed the company that knows their job and their work speak for itself, no need to complaint,” Mashaba said.
Another happy resident Elias Nchabeleng said in the past it was difficult to cross the road because we share the road with animals and there was no warning sign on the road, many people lost their lives in this road.
“We thanked SANRAL for the good work and for building this beautiful road for us and now we feel safe because there are lights, warning sign and a place where animal cross.
We wished the entire road in the country could be handed to SANRAL for construction and maintains, they know their work and their work is very impressive,” said Nchabeleng.
Tshwane Talks had one on one with R573 Limpopo project manager Lawrence Chauke on weekend and share the details about the completion of the road project between Moteti and Marblehall.
The section 3 of the R573 covers sections between Moteti and Marble Hall and we divided the section into 4 working phases, currently we are in phase 8,2 between Slovo and Siyabuswa or Kgobokane. Where we recently completed the upgrade section of the R573.
This section commences in February 2021 and the completion was February 2024.
We spent R538 million for the upgrading of the road until date on construction, 47 local SMME benefited in the project and R85 Million was spend on SMME.
We also had local labor, benefited in the project. We spend R25 million on local Laboure’s.
We also took College students who were hands on the projects.
“We are happy that the project was a success, and the community loved the beautiful road and we urge the community to look after the road and not to vandalize it when they experience service delivery issues.
We urge community not to burn the road or vandalized it but to sit down and approach the officials, let take care of it and love it because this is a big investment,” said Lawrence Chauke R573 Limpopo project manager.
Chauke further said they had training, it was a major component on the project. We train people and we spend R5 million on training, among others we had community training, which is not always a norm because we know to be doing technical training or engineering training.
“We were committed in training, we look at things like farming, projects that are not related to construction that we know after this project the locals will be able to benefit.
We also helped 240 locals were given an opportunity to do drivers licenses which is not what we do but it was a good initiative and part of our community training,” Chauke said.
Chauke further added that we worked together with the local steering committee they really benefited, because project liaison committee assisted a lot together with the local municipality in ensuring that we identify deserving locals to be part of this project.
Chauke also explain further about the upcoming section of the road.
The upcoming phases, they are left with 3 phases, we recently handed over the section between Tiotskraal and Marble Hall to Edwin construction in terms of physical construction work.
“We will be starting in May 2024 and contractor is busy doing what they call a mobilisations, together with local municipality they look at the data bases and compiling the data base for labor and ensuring that when we start in the beginning of May everything is in order,” he said.
He said apart from that there is a section between Moteti and Slovo that should be advertise before the end of March 2024, that is another phase that is coming.
“We will be left with the phase between Kgobokane and Toitskraal that is the phase that will be roll out last out of the 4 phases.
Chauke also highlighted about the completion of the R573.
Our phases are normally long on terms of duration, this one was close to 30 months and the phases that are coming, Moteti to Slovo will be also approximately be 30 months, so one can count, and construction can commence plus minus 6 months after advertisement and we can add 36 months that is rafely, the duration of the project.
“These are big projects and hence we need a bit of a time to construct.
We are looking forward for the completion of the entire R573 road and we would like to thank the community for their involvement, patients,” Chauke concluded.