Durban — Contractors, consultants and business forums are said to be among the hindering factors to the government being able to finish projects on time.
This was revealed by the KwaZulu-Natal Legislature’s Public Works Portfolio Committee, together with the Gauteng Legislature’s Infrastructure Development and Property Management Portfolio Committee, during their visit to King Dinuzulu Hospital.
The chairperson of the Infrastructure, Development and Property Management Portfolio Committee in Gauteng, Mpho Modise, said they were going to be blacklisting the ID numbers of those who own construction companies so that they would know that they are incompetent.
Modise revealed this at a discussion on the challenges that were talked about during the building of the maintenance hub at the hospital and the Tongaat Special School.
“You’d find that the Department of Public Works blacklists a company because of their incompetence and the next thing they have been contracted by the municipality or in another department,” said Modise.
Sboniso Majola, acting HOD in the KZN Public Works Department, said working together with communities and municipalities was going to eliminate the business forums who always want to be roped in and demand work whenever there is a new project.
“Talking to community members and explaining to them that a clinic would be built here, to get people in the area to work in it, would help,” he said.
Majola said the “sabotage between the consultants and contractors” was also one of the causes of delays and wasted taxpayers’ money.
“Budget would be set aside, a company would be appointed to do the work, and somehow along the way, they stop. Now you have to start afresh and do the whole process of getting another company,” he said.
Acting DDG for Infrastructure Maintenance and Technical Support, Zinhle Pfute, said during her presentation that 157 projects are under construction over multi-financial years, while 81 have been completed.
She said a total of R188 million has been spent on the maintenance of over 537 infrastructure facilities in the province.
Pfute added that they would be doing away with the work information management system as it cannot interface with systems like the central supplier database.
“The department is in the process of rolling out a new system,” she said.
She said that during the Covid pandemic, the Department of Public Works was required to strategise on how projects can be expeditiously completed within cost, on time and at good standard.
“The Covid-19 period called for adoption of new contracts and integration of contracts into our SCM processes, norms and day-to-day operations.”
She said the existing infrastructure maintenance hub buildings at King Dinuzulu Hospital had been identified as an emergency Covid-19 quarantine facility and needed to be refurbished.
Daily News