Dodoma. As a bus driver with 10 years of experience--traveling the Dar -es Salaam--Dodoma highway almost each day, Mr Kassimu Mohammed knows too well the heart-ache that comes with trying to dodge a pothole while cruising at a high speed.
'For new comers on this road, encountering a pot-hole is a nightmare,'' he says. I have been driving along this highway for many years now, and I can tell you that sometimes, I have narrowly escaped hitting another car while trying to dodge a pothole," he further tells this reporter.
Mr Mohammed is among several upcountry bus drivers who are irritated by the poor infrastructure on the Dar to Dodoma Highway and according to a short survey carried out by this reporter along the road, the potholes go unattended by the authorities for a long time, and sometimes leading to car crashes.
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| Photo of a pot-hole. Roads along the Dar to Dodoma Highway dont last long and such potholes are a nightmare to drivers along that major Road. |
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| From a distance, are work-men repairing pot-holes at Dakawa-Veta along the Morogoro-Dodoma Highway:PHOTO | |SYRIACUS BUGUZI, Kinga-Ajali Blog |
One of them, said the 200m stretch of the road at Dakawa-Veta, was harboring dangerous pot-holes which had caused cars to crash at that point in the past. "We are now trying to fill the gaps--not actually overhauling the road in order to reduce the risk of accidents here,'' he said.
While preferring anonymity because he was not authorized to speak, he insisted that there was a great need for the authorities to repair several of the potholes along the road because they are a huge risk especially to night drivers.
This reporter is now counting the number of pot-holes along the highway and will speak to the authorities on how this problem can be overcome. This is part of a wider project--on covering Road-Safety Stories which is sponsored by the World Health Organisation and run by Tanzania Media Foundation(TMF).
For more details and facts about this story on potholes, and many more others to come, please keep visiting this site.
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| This reporter, Syriacus Buguzi speaking to a man holding red and green flags used to warn drivers about the construction going on along the Morogoro-Dodoma Highway. From a distance, is a group of men and women at work, trying to repair pot-holes. A few maters from where we are standing, is Wami-Dakawa, where there is a monument for the Late Moringe Sokoine, Tz's former Prime Minister who died in a car crash along this road. PHOTO| |Kinga-Ajali Blog. |