A maintenance management system for urban roads.

The Road Maintenance Management system seeks to maintain and improve the road network in Tanzania in order to reduce the rate of pavement deterioration and to lower the cost of operating vehicles using the network from escalating to unproportional magnitudes due to damage. In this study the current Road maintenance management system in urban areas in Tanzania has been studied with the objective of identifying the current maintenance management systems under use, current methods used in mobilizing and disbursing resources, and to identify the shortcomings of the current system. Finally it looks for rational and equitable methods for resource mobilization and improvement of the current maintenance management system. The main bottlenecks are lack of funds; inadequate manpower and equipment; lack of supervision and monitoring of the maintained works due to lack of supervision, vehicles, incentives and low pay of the workers. Work scheduling and execution of work by the maintenance engineers are sometimes interrupted by the Councillors for their own political interests. Examples are given to illustrate the economic benefits of road maintenance, and the reasons for the poor conditions of road network in the Urban areas are discussed. The use of labour or equipment based operations for normal routine maintenance works and financial responsibility for urban roads maintenance among the beneficiaries on the basis of the benefits each receives are discussed. It is further recommended that in order to improve the current system there is a need to set priorities for budgeting and to identify ways of increasing the total road budget. Staff must be motivated and inculcated with a sense of duty and accountability and maintenance frequencies should be determined on an economic basis using whole-life costs. An effective and fair low-cost training of maintenance staff of Municipal and Towns should be set in place.