MBOMBELA – The provincial Department of Public Works, Roads and Transport (DPWRT) takes twice as long as planned to complete projects, but departments are not even capable of doing their own maintenance.
Premier Mr David Mabuza on Tuesday attempted to explain the reasons for the untimely completion of projects beyond their originally planned completion dates in response to questions for oral reply by Bushbuckridge Residents Association’s MPL Mr Cleopas Maunye in legislature.
Maunye suggested that departments be allowed to implement maintenance and renovation projects estimated to cost less than R5 million on their own. According to DPWRT’s annual report for 2013/14, 71 of 89 projects were completed within the contractual time, but others took more than twice as long as planned. But Mabuza said departments did not have the technical capacity to attend to the maintenance backlogs.
Cash-flow constraints in the department as well as slow progress, poor quality of work and a lack of technical capacity on the side of the contractors contributed to the delay. “Other unforeseen factors include incessant rainfall and social commotions,” Mabuza said.
“Despite this, we have taken steps to ensure that selected departments build minimum capacity to deal with maintenance challenges. The Department of Health has appointed teams at district level to undertake general maintenance and repair work in both hospitals and clinics. The Department of Education is currently finalising its school-maintenance strategy which looks at the formation of maintenance teams per district to attend to school needs.”
He added that the contracts of three contractors were terminated in 2013/14 and five in 2014/15. “The main reasons for termination were failure to meet contractual performance obligations such as sound quality of works, progress according to plan and resource availability,” Mabuza said.
