Africa-Press – Tanzania. RUKWA region has expressed its dissatisfaction for the delaying of the construction of modern Sumbawanga airport for almost a decade.
The Rukwa Regional Road Board (RRB) members aired their concern during their 36th meeting held on Tuesday and chaired by the Regional Commissioner Joseph Mkirikiti, saying the project took a long time to be accomplished. The RC said definitely the citizens in the region are heartbroken since the project has taken too long to start.
“TCAA should tell us when exactly the project will take off….The airport will serve as the gateway to neighbouring Zambia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi,” Mr Mkirikiti said.
In 2013, Tanzania Airport Authority (TAA) allocated over 20m/- for evaluation of an area at Kisumba Village in Sumbawanga Municipality for the construction of new airport.
The new airport area is spacious and is 20km from Sumbawanga municipality. On the Tuesday meeting, the Tanroads, Acting Regional Manager, Eng Jofrevas Ngowi, when presenting his report, said that preparation for implementing of the construction of the airport has been completed.
“Already, a contractor SinoShine Overseas Construction & Investment East Africa Ltd has been awarded to undertake the project at 55.9bn/-,” Eng August said during the RRB meeting. He also said the government had already spent over 3.7bn/- to compensate ‘wananchi’ who paved ways for the construction of the project while allocated over 2.8bn/- for preliminary construction of the project.
The airport construction fund comes from both the government and the European Investment Bank (EIB).
The then RC Stella Manyanya in 2012 requested the government to focus on building a new airport in the region rather than upgrading the current one at 187 hectares of land, which lying idle since 1984, when the region set it aside for construction of new modern airport.
