By Emmanuel Mafelah, mafelahemmanuel29@gmail.com
Gbarnga, Liberia- As in other parts of Liberia, deplorable road condition in the central Bong County is increasing the hardship for ordinary people and impeding business transactions, especially in rural areas.
Bong serves as a central point for cross-border trade between Liberia and neighbouring countries.
Several farmers, marketers and commercial motorcyclists can no longer hold bad their feelings and have been openly complaining about the difficulties they go through on a daily basis on deplorable roads, particularly serious during the ongoing rainy season.
“One of our major challenge in this part of Liberia is bad roads and is making things very difficult for us this rainy season,” said a commercial motorcyclist in Jennipleta, Josiah kerkulah.
“We spend too much time on the road and achieve nothing in return. In some circumstances where we sleep for days our goods can spoil with nothing to gain as dividend,” Mr. Kerkulah said.
According to some passengers, they sometimes pay local residents to help move a transport vehicle. ‘We will abandon cross-border trade if our roads cannot be rehabilitated especially during this rainy season,’ one of them told this Reporter.
“If the rainy season produces a more deplorable road then we could decide abandoning our intentions to save our incomes for the dry season next year,” Miatta Jackson, a marketer stressed.
Heavy rainfall for the past week in some parts of Bong County has hampered businesses for people who travel to neighboring counties.
Increasingly deeper potholes and deep mud continue to emerge, slowing the pace of traffic significantly and on some occasions making certain stretch of roads nearly impassable.
“Our journeys to neighboring counties have been slow all due to the bad road condition,” Madam Jackson adds.
Lofa County for example, should have been better improved given its crucial importance in the country in area of food production, but due to bad road connectivity it is not possible,” one taxi driver said.
In 2012, the leadership of the county budgeted US$662,300 from the County Social Development Fund (CSDF) and purchased a front-end loader, a motor grader and a dump truck with the aim of rehabilitating existing roads and the creation of new ones.
But the motor grader has since broken down and is parked somewhere in the county.
Assistant Bong County Superintendent for Development, Anthony Sheriff told www.newspublictrust.com recently that the county does not have money at the moment to repair the damaged equipment.
He said they were expecting allocation of funds for his office for the maintenance of the county’s equipment, but his request was not granted during the November 12, 2018 County Council Sitting.
Assistant Superintendent Sheriff said two years back, the County allotted US$15,000 to maintain the road building machines, but the money was used as part of pre financing payment to do some road works in the Bong County capital, Gbarnga.