By Anna Chibamu

TRANSPORT minister Felix Mhona was Wednesday grilled by legislators over rampant poor workmanship by contractors undertaking road maintenance works.

Members of Parliament (MPs) wanted to know what measures were being taken by government to ensure that companies who were granted contracts to maintain the countries highly dilapidated roads adhere to set standards.

This comes after several roads which were recently rehabilitated developed huge potholes and are barely trafficable.

Musikavanhu legislator Joshua Murire queried: “Minister of transport contracted companies to repair and construct roads. Some of these companies are failing to deliver. We have noticed that these roads are being poorly constructed or repaired. What is the government’s position on the companies that have not done their job properly?”

Minister Mhona responded: “I agree with the honourable member that we have failures in our ministry. We are going to blacklist them.”

“I have assigned my team to bring their names to parliament. They have wasted the taxpayer’s money and our time. Most of them have failed to run with the agenda of the government to rehabilitate our roads.”

“These roads require a lot of work and these are some of the roads that are developing potholes faster than others,” he said.

He added that his ministry is currently carrying out a monitoring and evaluation exercise on the rehabilitated roads, after which it would as contractors who would have been found wanting to account for their poor jobs.

“Once a road has been rehabilitated and potholes resurface within a short space of time, we take the contractor to account for such.”