Dear Editor,
The weekend news reports on the Amaila Falls road (‘Sithe Global eager to engage MPs, stakeholders on Amaila Falls project’ SN, January 8; ‘Two local contractors to help ‘Fip’ finish US$15.4M road’ KN, January 8) appear to exaggerate progress on this shambles. Section 2 is the piece branching off from the Mabura Road. At the end of December 2011, this piece was an unconsolidated stretch of crudely bulldozed sand with shallow side drains, while the specification calls for a consolidated 300 mm thickness of white-sand-clay. The road should be able to take 100-tonne loads, but the little bridge just 2 km from the Mabura Road junction is hardly big enough for a small truck. The specification calls for a consolidated 150 mm thickness of laterite on top of the clay-sand base. Instead, there was just 3.6 km of a thin skin of laterite, also not consolidated. Editor, it is a sure bet that no local contractors are going to be able to finish this road to the design specification by March-April 2012. Have you ascertained what penalties have already been paid by Synergy Holdings Inc for having missed three deadlines?
Yours faithfully,
Janette Bulkan
