Government has awarded a K144m contract to a Chinese company for the construction of a new runway at Kasama Airport in Northern Province.
This came to light today, when Parliamentarians under the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) visited the airstrip.
The four man committee led by Chairperson Vincent Mwale was in Kasama to establish why works at the airport were not undertaken despite government releasing K5.6m in 2013.
Mr Mwale was concerned that auditors had raised queries that even though funds were released to rehabilitate the runway, works had not commenced at the airstrip.
But clarifying the matter to the parliamentarians, Deputy Director for Civil Aviation Adams Daka said the K5.6m was meant for the rehabilitation of the old 1.7 kilometre runway.
‘’However, government thought is wise to have a completely new runway at Kasama hence this new contract,’’ he said.
Mr Daka said a new 3 km runway to run parallel to the old one will now be constructed to full bituminous standards at a cost of K144m.
He added that once completed, the runway will accommodate big planes and will be a strategic stopover because air traffic passing through Southern to East Africa will be able to refuel and check for technical faults at Kasama.
‘’This contract was signed last week and the Chinese contractor will move on site soon,’’ he said.
He added that the move will boost the tourism potential of the Northern Circuit.
And PAC members appealed to supervisors and technocrats involved in the construction of the runway to ensure that the project does not suffer unnecessary delays in order for people to realize the benefits of their investment.
Mwale said the PAC was concerned that huge sums of tax payers’ money is being spent on government projects whose completion is being unnecessarily delayed by unpatriotic civil servants and contractors.
And on the issue of Kasaba Bay, Mr Daka said a technical report indicated that almost 70 percent of the total works have already been completed.
Good job! All provincial headquarters must have good airports like Livingstone one.
GBM is doing a good job
Which planes land in Mansa? Awe imwe twanaka,bring down the mealie meal prices.
Prima! Bravo! Bravissimo!
This is how Sata and his minions steal our money. Thieves.
Get your entire family and go and do it for free.where have you been all these years?
K144m in dollars @ K6:$1 = $24m. This $24m dollars for 3km runway = $8m/km.
Which runway will cost $8m for each kilometer?? just thinking…..!!!
Good observation. Zambia is one destination that has abject poverty in the midst of ridiculously high costs. I always wonder at the way my costs shoot up when I travel from a developed economy to a so-called developing economy like Zambia’s. A sane project manager will be hard pressed to really justify these costs.
Will it be just the runway or will there be other facilities constructed, such as a new terminal, control tower, fire station, etc.?
It is shocking that some people can condemn such a progressive long over due move. For your own information kasama airport is the only airport that is in gravel . No and boost investment. investor will take money into Northern province if there is no airport bacause travelling by road takes over ten hours and yet the greatest potential on many areas lie in the North, like tourism , agriculture, Forestry etc. This hatred and phobia for the north will choke some. I totally agree with the Director Aviation who is saying that many flights in and out of Easte africa and Great lakes will then transit into kasama. In future we should go federal so that wach province makes its own decision than the current nonsense of relying on people that exhibit total ignorance of how our country should be dev
it cannot cost that much for the runway.
somebody’s palms were oiled!!!!!
lets keep up the good work by letting foreigners make fools of us……
Iwe Zed is not Aussie. Here we import everything and the exchange rate for foreign currency is crazy. Don’t you know that importing bitumen into Zed…mostly from SA costs an arm? The price here is just about right … even cheap for a modern airport.