The Puntland State of Somalia funded over $7 million worth of Road Rehabilitation Project.

BY: FARAH JAMA FARAH 

Bosaso - Garowe Road

This is a wonderful investment, that the Puntland government is spending 7 million to repair the damaged roads. After the collapse of the central government of Somalia, not all of the country's infrastructure, especially roads, was repaired, resulting in many accidents and many deaths, and property damage.

According to the plan, the Puntland government will rehabilitate four key roads in the next six months (Aug 2021 - January 2022) The roads to be repaired are Jurinle - Bosaso road, Qardho - Garowe road, Garowe - Birta Dheer road and Garowe - Falaryale road. It is worth asking when the Bosaso-Garowe road was built, but after its construction, did it receive any repairs? The Garowe–Bosaso Highway was constructed in 1988, after an Italian firm Merzario had been contracted to build the main trunk road, including its culverts and bridges. It was later completed in 1990. the highway starts from the Port of Bosaso and continues south as a single carriageway, up over the Al-Miskat hills and downwards toward Qardho. It continues from there around 205 km southwards to Garowe, whereafter the thoroughfare joins the Mogadishu–Berbera highway. The road boosted commercial trade between Somalia’s region and was the gateway for goods to be transported from the northern region to other regions and Ethiopia. In June 2012, the Puntland Highway Authority (PHA) began an upgrade and repair project on the large Garowe–Bosaso Highway. again, In June 2014, the PHA started a major rehabilitation project to repair parts of the road that had incurred structural damage. Scheduled repairs total around USD 389,498, and include overall reinforcement of the culverts and concrete wing walls, overall construction of the masonry works and gabion boxes, and construction of the check dam retain walls. In October 2019, the Puntland government announced that it would rehabilitate the Garowe-Bossaso road, a project that would be implemented by China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation(CCECC). CCECC began to conduct a survey on pavement distress and pavement condition rating, and eventually, it emerged that the road needs to reconstruct but unfortunately the Puntland government could not afford the road construction cost, nor did it receive any other assistance and so the project came to a standstill.

Finally, this $ 7 million project is would be funded by the Puntland government and we know that road construction projects in urban Somalia are mostly funded by the World Bank.

The writer (Farah) is a Civil Engineer who analyzes the recovery of Somalia's infrastructure. and can be reached  @farahtayin or Email Tayin1995@gmail.com.