Regional Seminar Proceedings 1990

8.1 LENGTHMEN SYSTEMS IN OPERATION

Kenya: There are approximately 5,500 lengthem covering at least 8,000kms of roads for routine maintenance. The supervision is arranged as follows:

One hundred lengthmen cover a length of approximately 150kms.

A study was carried out in Kenya which showed that overseers spent only 25% of their time actually supervising the work. 60% of their time was spent travelling on their motorbikes and the other 15% was taken up with administration. A second study in 1987, showed that the lengthmen system was only working to 50% efficiency so that the monitoring was tightened to try and improve the situation.

Botswana: Out of 9 districts 8 operate in groups of maintenance workers and the remaining district operates a lengthmen system. People generally prefer to work in groups of about 5 under a team leader. The team leader will have attended a training course. Tasks are assigned and checked in both systems to ensure reasonable productivity.

Lesotho: The lengthmen have chosed to work in pairs in Lesotho to enable them to work with company over two lengths of contract.

Mozambique: Lengthmen work for 5 days every week covering a length of 2.5km each, for the maintenance of gravelled roads. Gravel is dropped every 500m to assist them in the maintenance.

Mbeya, Tanzania: There are two systems in operation (I) lengthmen, (II) Gangwork. There is a headman for every 6 to 8 people depending on the terrain. The main supervision is to follow up these headman. The foremen/overseer goes to each site every 2 days. The District Inspector goes to each site once a week. To date Mbeya have had better results from the lengthmen that from the gangs. The headmen are selected from the rehabilitation sites and given 3 weeks training.

8.2 HEADMAN

There are three options for the headmen.

(i) A headman who has a length of road to maintain but also has a responsibility to supervise others.

(ii) A headman who has no road to maintain but solely supervises the lengthmen under his charge.

(iii) A headman in charge of a small group of workers that cover a longer stretch of the roadworking together rather than individually.

In a study in Kenya the non-working headman in charge of individual lengthmen showed the best results for maintenance. If an emergency occurs then the heaman has the authority to group his lengthmen and tackle the urgent problem as a single gang.

Mbeya also believes that the lengthman system is more efficiant than the gang work system.

8.3 COSTS OF MAINTENANCE

For Mbeya Region, the lengthman system would need 80,000,000 Tsh per annum, but the Government is proposing to provide only 40,000,000 Tsh for the next financial year. In Kenya 80% of road work funding is from donor and maintenance uses approximately 33% of the funds. The Government is only aboe to provide 60% of the funds needed for maintenance if it carries out no rehabilitation works at all. The Kenyan costs for routine maintenance are roughly US$300 per km.

From these figures it looks as though Governments will have difficulty funding their road maintenance activities even when using the economic lengthman system.

8.4 SUPERVISION VEHICLES

In some roads programmes it is possible to share supervision vehicles for maintenance with other activities such as regravelling and rehabilitation. This would spread the cost of the vehicle over three activities and ensure that it stayed in the roads sector.

The Zambian roads programme is based at district level ad because of the jshorgate of funds some district councils do not have any vehicles. Can they afford to have a vehicle for the roads inspector? Can they fuel it and repar it?

8.5 ALTERNATIVE METHODS OF MAINTENANCE

The questions to be considered are:-

Which is the best system?

Which is the affordable system?

Could the local community be relied upon to put pressure on the headman to maintain their road properly. The evidence suggests that this does not work, and that the road will not be maintained properly, if at all, therefore supervision is needed.

There were three proposals:-

(i) Use of labour contractor to carry out maintenance.

(ii) "Periodic" routine maintenance where a gang of workers, under close supervision, would carry out road maintenance work once every two or three months.

(iii) A lengthman system where the workers woul be laid off during 3 to 5 months of the dry season.

Any lengthman system will have difficulty in operating in areas where villages are far apart i.e. 20km. Can a system of carrying out maintenance once every three months be sustained, or if there are administrative problems and the Supervisor does not appear, will all maintenance work stop. With the lengthman system perhaps it can continue more easily even if there are administrative problems as it is routine and continuous. Is 1.5km with a three day working week the optimum output for each lengthman?

To be able to assess the various methods some investigations must be carried out. In Kenya they are about to start a study in different climatic regions, over section of road with varying gradients and soil types to assess the optimum length for the lengthmen working in these different conditions.

Practical, not theoretical trials are needed on the alternative proposals as they have not been tested. Each roads programme should try out the different methods and compare costing, transport etc. These factors may change from region to region and country to country, thus making it necessary for each programme to run its own trials.

8.6 MAINTENANCE OF ROADS WHICH HAVE NOT BEEN REHABILITATED

A clear distinction must be made between the routine maintenance that can be carried out on a properly rehabilitated road and the spot improvements or emergency repairs carried out on an unrehabilitated road. If, as is the case in Tanzania, a priority road network for the Regions has been decided, these are the roads that are to be rehabilitated and properly maintained using routine and periodic maintenance. Some of the roads that fall outside the network may have to be kept open and so will receive "maintenance" in the form of emergency repairs or spot improvement. Care must be taken that the funds set aside for the priority road networks are not lost in frequent emergency repairs on non-priority roads.

Donor policy may have been at fault in the past in encouraging the rehabilitation of roads without considering the implications for the cost of regular maintenance. A world Bank study stated that for every kilometre of road rehabilitated in Africa, two kilometres are lost from lack of appropriate maintenance.

8.7 CONCLUSIONS

All roads programmes should make trials of the various maintenance methods listed in Section 9.5 above and compare the results for their own area, with those obtained using a straight forward lengthman system. Without trials any advice on maintenance will be based on speculation only.