MANZANA FOLK SEND SOS TO GOVT OVER ACCIDENTS

MBABANE – Residents of Manzana fear for their lives following the recurring motor vehicle accidents along the road.

In a recent accident, a driver of a Toyota Hilux 4x4 (Legend 45) bearing a foreign registration, lost control while travelling along the Mbabane-Ngwenya Bypass Highway, crashing into one of the houses situated there. 

The accident happened last Friday around 9pm, with the car hitting the guardrails and veering off the road, descending a steep slope of about 25 metres. 

This is not the first accident, something which has sparked fear among the residents occupying the houses next to the busy highway, commonly used by trucks driving to and from the Ngwenya Border Gate.

These are the same houses which government relocated to accommodate the construction of the highway.

The houses were constructed by government as compensation for those who were affected by the construction of the highway.

This highway involved upgrading 11km of the existing MR3 road to dual carriageway through mountainous terrain in a highly populated area.

It was built at a cost of over E1 billion. Its initial budget was around E500 million. 

There are about four houses next to the road, whose occupants stated that they no longer enjoyed their sleep in fear that a vehicle might land on the rooftops as the houses were just below the highway.   

Scariest

“The moment you hear the sound of a vehicle, you just lose your sleep. The scariest part is when a truck passes by. This is just poor planning on government’s side as they were the ones that approved the construction and relocated the homesteads,” the residents stated.

Chief Roads Engineer in the Ministry of Public Works and Transport Vincent Dlamini said he would send his team to assess the root cause of the problem resulting in the drivers of the vehicles losing control.  Dlamini said they would not just erect concrete barriers without knowing the problem. 

“You need to understand that we need to come up with a solution that would be relevant to address the cause of the problem.” He noted that since the construction of the road many years ago, the problem had not been reported before. However, the residents recalled about four accidents along the stretch of the road in recent times. 

Dlamini said government could build concrete barriers where the accidents occurred, but chances for motorists to cause accidents on that spot were slim because the road was straight. The driver of the car could not be reached for comment.

Superintendent Phindile Vilakati, the Chief Police Information and Communications Officer of the Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS), confirmed the recent accident. 

Vilakati said police investigations into the cause of the accident were ongoing.

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