DURBAN – THE eThekwini Municipality is under-spending on its capital projects and in some cases paying for projects that are behind schedule.
The building of capital projects, which are infrastructure assets, in the municipality has drawn the attention of the City’s audit committee which said there were concerns of poor planning and monitoring in the manner these projects are carried out.
The committee raised the concerns in its latest report looking at the state of the city tabled recently.
In its report, the committee said it had noted with concern the rate of spend on capital projects.
It said the city was underspending on these projects and the underspending could be indicative of discrepancies in planning, budgeting, capacity challenges and failure to implement the supply chain processes.
“Secondly there were projects where the total progress payment exceeded the physical stage of completion (of the project), this is not a norm,” said a report.
It continued: “While we appreciate the challenges of the current year, and noting the projection of 100% spend, the reasonableness of this as well as the quality of the spend remains a concern, the increased likelihood of project risk should be kept in mind.
“We recommend that the overall programme management for capital projects should be strengthened in order to deal with both the quality of the work performed including the pace of construction activity, versus the progress payments,” it said.
The municipality said it had taken steps to address these problems that include the establishment of a capital investment committee that will monitor the projects.
It said the capital management committee is also in place and pre-screens the capital projects while procurement planning is also closely monitored to maximise the spend.
THE MERCURY