Minister of Housing and Infrastructure Development Ronald Chitotela is disappointed that some contractors have abandoned construction sites despite being paid all their dues in full.
Speaking to ZNBC news in Mwansabombwe shortly after he inspected construction works of a government administration block, a police post and houses for civil servants, Mr. Chitotela said it is disheartening to see abandoned works even after government
committed itself by settling the bills on time.
He has warned that he will not condone any form of dishonest by any of the contractors who have gotten their money in full but are failing to deliver the work.
The Minister has also expressed displeasure over failure to supervise the projects by his officers in the Ministry.
He has since summoned the contractors for a meeting at his office on Wednesday next week.
It is a lie, no Contractor can be in full without doing any job.They are paid according to the job done and then make a claim accordingly.
Rodrigo: Ian with you. It’s a lie. Either his intelligence team lied to him or he is the one lieing. It’s not possible for a contractor to be paid for work done and fail to continue with the project without a reason. It’s either the contractor was crooked when getting paid and he had to pay paying levies and then discovered that he has no more money in the contract to complete the project. The only remedy is to abandoned the site. Those who fail to supervise are the ones who crooked these contractors into falls rates. This about of our projects are costly is not real. People get these contracts without calculating the cost of doing these projects. Contracts are not only about cost but it’s a combination of other project requirements.
The dishonest people are Chitotela & his govt. They deliberately choke local contractors to fail in preference to chinese who give them kickbacks.
Those Zambian contractors are like PF ministers, they only appear in first week of the month.
How did they qualify for the contracts? You are not paying them on time!!
This minister is always singing praises for foreign contractors. … What is his agenda???? Foreigners will never develop your country bwana minister. If local contractors lack capacity, can we please be deliberate and create platforms to upgrade their skill-set. It is a lie that they are paid on time, would be shocked if one local contractor agrees with him.
Let’s rewrite the title in order to syncronise with the truth on the ground: Government disappointment by PF contractors engaged to build Infrastructure. Yes, all failed projects are down to govt having settled for political patronage over capacity. As things stand, Chitotela is being less than truthful because the contractors in question all operate in PF colours. Sadly, the cost of this corruption will be bourne by the poor citizen who, despite the failed projects, will nonetheless pay back the euro bonds that the cadres chewed for free with the collusion of govt. And Chitotela is deathly silent on the question of bringing to book the said culprits, leaving us to suspect that he indeed is not telling the truth. Zikomo.
Supervision is the Key. Any institution, everywhere in the world that lacks supervion & inspection fails. But in many advanced and efficient nations everything being done by a
supervised and documented.This simply means that the failure in this area fall squarely at the minister’s desk. There are no Ministry structures in place to conduct constant supervision, no engineers to evaluate structures and no policies to ensure contractor’s full adherence. Who is to blame? The Minister needs to put his house in order!
Expose them. We want to know who they are.
Kambwili’s Mwamona Contractors has received payment without any work done. PF deception saying “local contractors are disappointing”, these are PF contractors disappointing PF government.
‘He has since summoned the contractors for a meeting at his office on Wednesday next week’…..the problem is that we will not be publicly told what shall be deliberated in that meeting simply because the affected contractors will bring out issues which exposes shortfalls on the part of the Govt…..its a nightmare to ‘WIN’ a contract, how can anyone in his right frame of mind walk away from an assignment without a valid reason….the govt delays paying the contractor to a point were he chokes himself with bank loans and default penalties… by the time the govt releases part payments, the whole amount is taken by the bank
The govt expects local contractors to go and borrow from the Zambian banks at 47% APR whilst they wait for payments from the govt….really laughable…meanwhile the Chine contractors have low interest rate overdrafts from Chona Bank when they are payment delays.
Stop lying you’ve made local contractors lose there houses to the banks because of your poor payment plans. Why are you so unfair to local contractors who you never pay in time and you take more than a year to pay them . Sometimes when payments come you pay some companies that you know and leave others. You’re a very bad man for this job and you’ve killed the locals with your behaviour towards locals. Look at the interest from the banks and how much the kwacha drops to a dollar by the time you paying them. Behave yourself and stop talking rubbish. The ones who are failing are companies of cadres who are not contractors .
Jay Jay well said this time. Only this time. You sound good as a bussineman not a politician. We on the same page this time.
Throw them in jail. Un patriotic. Citizens depended on those infrastructural changes!