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Of Malawian Cities and road networks
By David Mkwambisi
Road infrastructure is one of the key indicators of national and local development. The importance of roads has been covered by several scholars that include access to market, information and communication between relations and business associates.
Road infrastructure contributes to delivery of other services such as health, education, social security and even targets to reduce food insecurity. Roads infrastructure has a direct link to poverty reduction, environmental conservation and social security.
While the government is doing a tremendous job on improving our roads, there is still an indication that our cities in general and in particular Lilongwe, the dreams have to be realised. This article covers some of factors that have led to this problem, the implications thereof and possible strategies that be can implemented to improve the situation.
Urban planning has lacked vision and proper strategy in the last two decades. Even though the original master plan had ideal and best plans for the city, those given the authority did not want to follow proper procedures in land allocation albeit quality of structures. As such, all spaces marked for road expansion have been allocated for building including filling stations, warehouses and super stores.
Currently, the original land use (residential, commercial and industrial) for urban areas is not properly followed and construction of buildings is being done without official approval and monitoring. Urban planning is not considering issues of land distribution, control and access of land and other resources, conflicts between uses and users and there is no regulatory framework for construction. This could be as a result of multiple land lords controlling our land in cities.
Where planning has been followed, the approach has been characterised by long-range comprehensive planning which adopt a blue-print approach. There are no institutional structures for monitoring and policing of illegal land use as well as vending in cities.
The Malawi governments seem to lack resources for meeting the demands of urbanization and enforce laws. Cities are failing to provide necessary social amenities as such they have no power to deter those affecting road networks such as vendors and traders.
For years, some city assemblies have lacked the sort of leadership with vision and there has been no single policy to improve road networks. In particular, the capital city, we have not witnessed a single deliberate policy to regulate, control and monitor movements of traffic let alone illegal allocation of land. These sort of leaders have affected the lives of several residents for personal gains, have lacked national vision and in the same course wasting tax payers money.
In line with the above issues, corruption has been on our tables with the allocation of prime land to high-income people. Unfortunately most of the people who have accessed this land have been non Malawians, who have no interest to invest in permanent and high quality buildings.
Over the years, urbanization has been on our cards, and the United Nations rank Malawi as the most urbanizing country in the world. This problem has not been considered by our city managers as a contributing factor to affect movement of both people and services at city scale. There’s no strategy to hold the population increase let alone to divert the pressure. As a result, building of structures for business has all affected the flow of traffic in our cities.
Roads that are supposed to divert traffic from the inner city have been neglected for years. Unfortunately, there is no plan on our cards to construct these roads for proper traffic flow. Today, despite and increase in number of vehicles, the size has remained the same and quality has not been improved. This is a sign of failure for those in charge of such important institutions.
Several implications can be discussed here because of poor road networks in our cities. For example accidents that could have been easily prevented if our roads were in good condition and were able to control traffic flow. An increase in road accidents has several implications including loss of life, impact of businesses and pressure on health services.
Delivery of important services such as health, waste management, security, food systems and marketing of products have all been affected by poor roads networks. Health related deaths that could have been prevented have resulted in loss of lives as roads are blocked by minibus drivers with no alternative routes.
Time taken to reach a destination is seriously affected losing important assignments, working hours and income in the process. This has also affected several service providers such as post offices, banks, food industry and agriculture.
Knowing that urbanization will continue, waste generation and number of vehicles will increase; more people will require improved service, there is need to come up with solutions to this problem.
For example, there is need to revisit our city plans, develop a vision and restart rebuilding the cities. In this loom, it is essential for stakeholders to meet and come up a new master plan. At this meeting, a task force could be formed to come up with a cabinet paper for approval to destroy all building that are preventing the expansion of our roads. This is important because, it is not proper to derail development because of building that are of poor quality and restricting urban development.
Re-allocation of facilities from the inner city could be another strategy. For example in Lilongwe, the Central market can be moved to areas of low density such as Kanengo or Lumbadzi. Currently, places that are meant for residential or small-scale business are now being used for large scale hauling and warehouses (e.g. Biwi Triangle). This has an implication on environment, traffic flow as well as support to native Malawians. Market could also be situated in peri-urban areas
Introduction of one way traffic could also improve the flow of traffic. This is also an important strategy to prevent and reduce unnecessary accidents. This could also be accompanied by special ways for none motorized vehicles such as bicycles and Ngolo. Heavy duty trucks and small moving vehicles should also have there own ways and these should be prevented in the inner city.
Fees could be introduced on specific occasions including big walks, weddings and political gatherings that have contributed to this problem. These fees could extend to poor parking, long parking and slow moving vehicles. In actual fact fees could also be introduced during peak periods such as lunch and morning times.
Introduce new official working hours to cover a 24hour shift within some sectors. This will allow the nation to work and contribute effectively to national goals on that clock. Currently, the nation is effective within 8 hours and the rest of the time is wasted. Schools, offices, businesses could all be considered on this approach where other sectors could start around 10am and finish late. This will mean investing in traffic rights and security.
Finally but not list is to reorganize the whole city infrastructure. Let drinking places be in the right places, garages and warehouses should be moved to where they belong, schools and churches should be in their proper areas, vendors and part time businesses should be given the right support to remain in proper places. Without thinking in these lines, life in our cities will be extremely dangerous, boring and of all a disaster. I hope one political leader will give us his vision on our cities.
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