Infrastructure Disaster

Infrastructure Disaster

Zambia has a problem with maintenance for a very long time. We have in many cases failed to maintain what we have. I know it is hard to acquire new infrastruture for a young economy like ours, but maintaining what we have saves a lot of resources from wasteful use and can make us look at other things we currently don't have.

So what is it that we can not do right in our infrastructural maintenance? We let the strutures wear out to such an extent it is impossible to repair or maintain but easier and cheaper to replace them. This has put a strain our little resources and has mad us lag so much behind.

We need to develop a culture of maintenance. Its not only economical but total common sense. Our land needs all the resources it can get to achieve any meaningful develop. The cost of maintenance compared to the cost of getting brand new structures is very low. Well, this is not an economics blog, much as I believe the polity and economics are the same, I want to take a different stance on here.

Politically the infrastructural disaster is lack of foresight. You can't let resources go to waste just because you have not put up structures that will safe guard against any form of waste. Ministry of works and supply and any such that is related to maintenance of structures should take it up and deal with this problem.

Zambia is poor, and getting poorer by the day just because not so much effort has been put into looking after the structures that we have. Compared to many countries in the region, we have been at peace the longest and yet have nothing to show for it. Countries which have been at war have better roads, better schools and better buildings that us. What have we done wrong? We have an ever worsening system which can not take care of itself. We can't even put up roads to last 5years. And after that 5 years, we still have to go out and try to rebuild the roads and not maintain them before they reach that state.

After so many years of KK's rule was ended in our beloved country, we have the worst looking compounds than before. Kabwata, Kamwala and Chilenje all had good roads. Now these places look like they have just started constructing houses and have not yet addressed the road network. What happened to the tar that covered them? When was there a system to look after the roads? What Chiluba spent in getting the small size shoes could have been used on the roads. I have not sympathy for all those friends of Chiluba but this man has cost us more than we can imagine. We have rivers running through cairo road after even 1mm of rain. The call-boys have even taken up strategic places which have pools of water so they can put stones on and only allow people to pass through if they pay them K1000.00. This is in the CBD!!! No road is immune to floods no matter how light the rain is.

Is it that hard to maintain a drainage system so we ca wait for 10 years to be able to start afresh? What kind of people are we that fail to look after the things that we use? Who will look after these things for us? I can't even talk about litter, that will mean I spend a night blogging about it! We have to find means to correct out thinking processes to make this country far better than it is now. Most of these things cost very little and in most cases just our time. We can do better