By Mast Reporter in Kabwe
IN every contract, we need to put penalty clauses for contractors failing to perform, says Minister of Water Development and Sanitation Collins Nzovu.
Nzovu explained that government continues to lose out when contractors fail to deliver on time but instead ask for extensions.
Speaking when he visited Lukanga Water and Sanitation Company in Kabwe, Nzovu said government needs to protect itself the way that contractors do.
“In every contract, we need to put penalty clauses for failure to perform on the contract. If the end date is 30th December, it means that must be the end date, 30th December, unless they have valid reasons to extend the contract, if there are no valid reasons to extend the contract, let’s charge them, the damages, that is standard practice,” he said.
“On our side as clients, we need to protect ourselves. The contractor, themselves, they are protected because once we pay them late, they charge us interest.”
Nzovu noted that government must not continue losing money in that manner.
“So, we need to come to a stage where everybody takes responsibility. The contractor will be very quick to judge your interest if you do not pay them, but you don’t even charge them for damages. I have seen it on all the projects, that must end. Government must not continue losing money, it should not. I think for me, we will be very should not serious on this, this is very serious,” he said.
Nzovu warned Shankar Construction Limited manager Sharun Kumar Reddy Kaya that their contract will not be extended when he discovered that they have only drilled one borehole out of 31 outlined in the contract.
“You my engineers with the propensity to extend contracts at every turn, this must stop. You are remaining with one year six months, we will not extend this contract, we want our 31 commercial boreholes drilled, tanks erected. Whatever is in the scope of the construct for the 31 boreholes must finish in time,” he said.
“You are not on site, so I am instructing my engineers, write him a letter, warn him to come back on site, we must make decisions early, we shouldn’t wait for one year. You are sleeping two months the man has come to drill one borehole out of 31 and has gone back.”
And Nzovu disclosed that government has set a target of producing 10 million tonnes of maize per year.
He said three million tonnes of the 10 million is set to come from irrigation.
“So, the other good news is that, obviously going forward we will have a lot of traction on what we are calling the Zambia water master plan. And I have seen some of the work that I was directed to do is going on well. We are going to do feasibility study on all sites, we are going to map our water resources, we are going to come up with bankable projects for all the areas throughout the country. Now this is a multisectoral approach, this is what I wanted to tell you. So, the Ministry of Water Development and Sanitation, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries, the Ministry of Green Economy, and the ministry of Energy, including the ministry of Finance we have formed a technical team which will come up with a master plan. Our aim, and let us be clear that our aim as a country, our aim as the UPND government is a target of 10 million tonnes of maize per year, that’s our aim. And part of this 10 million tonnes of maize, three million tonnes will come from irrigation. That means the Ministry of Water Development and Sanitation must quickly come on board to harvest this water,” he said.
“We need to build these dams, it’s a three-year program and if it’s a three-year program, there should be no failure by any contractor to build that dam. There should be no delay by you who are the consultants our technical team to provide that specification. The whole region is experiencing deficits as far as maize is concerned. We are not only stocking at maize, we are looking at wheat, I think wheat we are about 300,000 tonnes per year, but we import some wheat so we also want to be self-sufficient in that crop. There is another project coming to see how we can transfer water from Luapula to the Kafue system, the studies are going on.”
