We have complained and we will continue to complain about the Wilkinson road construction and the effect it is having on the people.
We are truly sorry for the people running businesses along Wilkinson road and the people living along and adjacent to that road.
We are sorry because the businesses along Wilkinson road have suffered for too long. They believed that the construction will go on as promised, rapidly and within the one year period it will be over and things will have come to normal. This has sadly not been so. Sales at the supermarkets have dropped arguably by 70%. These supermarkets are barely surviving now. Their entrances were cut off without so much as a word to them and when they complained they were told to go and ask the government. Well this is the same government that says it wants the private sector to grow, yet they seem not to care about the effect their programs are having on some sections of the private sector.
Take for example Freetown Supermarket. Their entrance has been dug up for over four months now and it still remains dug up; and the most annoying thing is that there is absolutely no sign of any work going on. Can we imagine how much business they have lost and continue to lose with their frontage still dug up? Does anybody care? In fact because of the construction going on people naturally turn away from using that route and that means bad business for the supermarkets as their normal customers thus use other routes.
Again the disruption of water supply and electricity for over six months now along this road also badly affects the supermarkets since they have to cool their products on a 24 hour basis otherwise they become stale and not good for consumption. Is all this extra expense and low sales being taken into consideration when the NRA asks for their taxes? Does anyone think of compensating these people at least giving them some sort of tax break because they are being made to suffer due to no fault of theirs?
This is all the reason why we continue to criticize the Wilkinson road project because for the people who live there and the people who do business there it has all been just problems and problems with no solutions. When will it all end?