Plumtree plans $72,000 roads upgrade

Plumtree Town Council has allocated $72,000 towards road maintenance as part of efforts to spruce up the image of the border town.

Town Secretary, Davis Dumezweni Luthe, said the local authority received $48,000 from the Zimbabwe National Road Administration while council contributed a further $26,000 towards the tarring of a road leading to the town's CBD.

"We have partnered with the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development and we are working on tarring a 1,5 km dust road stretch along the Plumtree-Thekwane Road which is a State road. The road is strategic because it leads into the town.

"A technical team is on the ground surveying the road. We will later start the process of tarring the road," said Luthe.

He said in another project the council had managed to construct three classroom blocks at a new school, Matiwaza Primary, using donated building material.

The council recently mobilised resources for the construction of the school which is expected to open soon and help ease congestion at the old schools in the town.

Luthe said the local authority was in the process of roofing the three classroom blocks as well as constructing toilets. "The progress of the school project is a result of combined efforts by council and the donor community in Plumtree. By June these three blocks will be complete and the school will be having basic infrastructure making it possible for the school to start enrolling pupils," he said.

The local authority held several donor conferences where various organisations and institutions who included members of the business community, residents and government institutions, contributed resources for building the school.

At the beginning of this year, Plumtree Town Council started collecting 50 cents from each household every month which was directed towards the construction of the school.

Luthe said the town's residential areas were increasing resulting in schools failing to accommodate the growing number of children.

Mangwe District Education Officer, Headman Mpofu, recently said the town needed at least three more new schools to cope with the increasing number of pupils. He said existing ones were heavily congested with each having an enrolment that was almost double its capacity.

Plumtree has two secondary schools and two primary schools, namely Phakamani High, Plumtree High, Dingumuzi Primary and Allan Redfern Primary.

According to Mpofu, Dingumuzi Primary had a capacity of 800 pupils but has an enrolment of 1, 300, Phakamani High had 774 pupils instead of 500 while Allan Redfern Primary has 501 pupils instead of 300.

He said pupils from the town who failed to secure places in these schools turned to rural day schools situated about 20 kilometres outside Plumtree.