Public Works and Infrastructure Minister, Sihle Zikalala, has warned construction companies and developers, who abandon construction sites after doing shoddy workmanship in public infrastructure projects, saying they face blacklisting and being barred from doing business with the government.
Zikalala issued the warning during his tour of Public Works projects located in the Free State province.
The oversight visit was on the unfinished R232 million Correctional Service Centre in Parys as well as the Park Road Police Station in Bloemfontein.
The two facilities are incomplete and have missed their completion date by over four years due to a growing tendency where construction companies will claim liquidation and incapacity to continue after claiming portions of the project funds.
The work then gets ceded to a new company which leads to cost escalations and eventually the ballooning of costs and delays in the delivery of key infrastructure.
During the visits, Zikalala was accompanied by the MEC for Public Works and Infrastructure in the Free State, Dibolelo Mance, as well as Community Safety Roads and Transport MEC, Maqueen Letsoha-Mathae.
“As the government, we can no longer tolerate this tendency of projects being halted due to construction company incapacities. We need to have projects delivered on time and within scope. This calls for proper planning, monitoring and consequence management,” Zikalala said.
“We should not have a project started in 2017 and still incomplete in 2023. In one project, a total of three different companies were appointed but the projects are still incomplete.
“We need to respond to this challenge of failing contractors especially after some monies have been paid. This is unacceptable,” Zikalala said.
Zikalala said one of the most critical actions in fighting corruption and entrenching a culture of timeous delivery of projects is to restrict those serial non-performers from doing business with the government.
“The facilities that get delayed are centres from which service delivery is launched by the police to build safer communities and other departments to render service delivery to citizens. It is high time that we address poor project management in government programmes,” the minister said.
Zikalala is also calling for an audit on all the blocked and incomplete projects estimated at billions of Rands.
“The Department of Public Works and Infrastructure needs to earn the confidence of departments as the implementing agent of choice and we will not have our name being liquidated by poor planning, project management and outright incompetence. We will not associate ourselves with any company that performs poorly,” Zikalala emphasised.
Giving emphasis to the sentiments of Minister Zikalala, MEC Mance indicated that someone has to take responsibility and that it can’t be that, the name of our Government is tarnished by companies and persons who do not see value in the work that the Government is providing for communities.
The Minister will soon be meeting with the Infrastructure Built Environment Anti-Corruption Forum to assess work done to mitigate the threats of corruption and fraud within the construction and infrastructure sector.
“As the driver of infrastructure for economic growth and job creation, we need to remove all obstacles that are preventing our country from being turned into a construction site.
“In these construction sites communities are provided work opportunities and youths are empowered with skills. When projects stall, livelihoods of people are negatively affected,” Zikalala said.