EDITORIAL: Why is Mwenge- Tegeta road having no lights?
What you need to know:
One wonders why such a well-built road has neither streetlights nor traffic lights that would have ensured safety for road users. For instance, the four-way junction at Africana and Mbuyuni as well as the Lugalo intersection, traffic lights are essential, but they aren’t there!
Accidents are getting too common on the newly built Mwenge-Tegeta road, leading to too much loss in human lives, broken limbs and damaged vehicles virtually every day. Let us hasten to express our appreciation of government efforts to improve infrastructure in Dar es Salaam aimed at making motoring less tedious and reducing traffic jams. However, when such a development turns an erstwhile safe, albeit bad road, into a slaughter house, it puts a smear on what should have been a case of pure pride. Instead of just reducing traffic jams, such infrastructure goes further to reduce human lives as well.
One wonders why such a well-built road has neither streetlights nor traffic lights that would have ensured safety for road users. For instance, the four-way junction at Africana and Mbuyuni as well as the Lugalo intersection, traffic lights are essential, but they aren’t there!
The Mwenge-Tegeta road was officially launched about a year ago by President Jakaya Kikwete, but to date, the whole length of the beautiful double lane is in darkness. Do engineers at Tanroads and our traffic police consider the situation okay? Don’t these authorities believe that certain points along the Mwenge-Tegeta road deserve traffic lights? How many people must be killed unnecessarily before this is rectified?
Didn’t the original road design include street and traffic lights? If the answer is yes, why didn’t the contractor have them in place before handling over the road to the government? If it is no, our question is: didn’t anyone see the omission as a recipe for preventable accidents?
Of course, we are aware that not all accidents occurring on this road are caused by the absence of traffic lights, but for sure, having such a well-built road with several intersections minus street lights and traffic lights smacks of professional recklessness.
