Project News

Dr. Tatsumi Tokunaga, RMSD Project Leader, giving a brief outline on development of the Operational Guidelines for rural road maintenance.

Introduction

One of the activities of the RMSD Project is to convene regular meetings on the operational guidelines for rural road maintenance with PMO-RALG, MOW and other stakeholders. The guidelines aim to facilitate technical and non-technical staff within the Council to implement road works activities efficiently and effectively.

Contents for the Guidelines

The participants agreed to include four chapters in the Guidelines:
1. Chapter I: Outline & Policy Issues;
2. Chapter II: Planning;
3. Chapter II: Implementation;
4. Chapter IV: Monitoring & Evaluation.

Discussions and Understandings on the Operational Guideline

The Guidelines should be user friendly for all technicians and engineers. It should consider national and sector policy directives in transport, national construction industry, rural development and so forth.

The Guidelines should come up with the standards that direct the Council Engineers make a reasonable decision to use Labour Based Technology (LBT) or Equipment Based Technology as quality of works assured.

The Chairperson requested the RMSD project to invite other developing partners to come up with the same understanding in financing rural road development and maintenance. The JICA representative pledged to discuss with other developing partners to discuss challenges of fund shortage in rural roads development.

A minimum resource model should be included in the planning stage to make maintenance effective. The unit rates should reflect the actual intervention need. The unit rate provided by PMO-RALG to the councils should be treated as guidance to in planning.

Labour Based Technology is a good method especially in rural areas for employment generation and for promoting ownership of road asset to communities; however; community involvement and time management will be needed as well as training on quality control.

M&E covers all stages from planning to implementation. It was advised that M&E be separated, so that one can exactly know what is required when the Guidelines are used.

Setting up of the working Groups

The four working groups were proposed covering Policy Directives, Planning, Implementation and Monitoring & Evaluation as follows:

Working group	Contents	Responsible organization
Policy, abstract and outline of the Guidelines	Policy for making the guidelines will be also part of the item	PMORALG, Chaired by Eng. Mfinanga
Planning	Road condition survey	Chamwino DC, Chaired by Eng. Mpinzile
	Medium and long term planning
	Annual planning
Implementation	Tender/contract document	Iringa DC, Chaired by Eng. Runji
	Contract management and administration
	Evaluation of contractor
Monitoring & Post Evaluation	Monitoring & Evaluation of maintenance works	RSE of Dodoma and Iringa) Eng. Mkwata & Eng. Mwakalalile

JICA Expert team together with PMORALG will provide inputs to all of the groups whenever necessary.

Eng. L Runji, from Iringa DC, presenting
The implementation chapter

A Group Photo