The true cost of faulty govt buildings

Mmegi Editor | Friday May 30, 2014 14:08

What Robby Sebopeng does not deserve though, is to have his final days as Auditor General smeared with the memory of a building collapse, trapped and desperate employees and the ensuing calamity associated with such disasters.

And yet that is precisely what could happen as the Auditor General’s Office was declared unsafe for occupation last June, after sections of the roof collapsed due to structural deficiencies.

Across from Sebopeng’s office and within Kgale Mews, another government office has been unoccupied since 2005 due to serious structural flaws. It is reported that passing vehicles are capable of causing tremors in the building!

In the Government Enclave, an office within the Labour and Home Affairs office reportedly flooded earlier this month, after a ceiling collapsed, the water damaging visas and permits, resulting in delays to foreign applicants.

In the case of Sebopeng’s office, the potential human disaster drips with irony. An office dedicated to holding public officers to the highest standards of accountability, faces a physical disaster from the failure of the very systems it is constitutionally mandated to supervise.

Not that Sebopeng has been quiet. In each report since 2010, the Auditor General has been questioning the Lands and Housing Ministry on why structurally defective buildings were bought, whether they would have to be demolished and what the ramifications were for the national purse.

Answers, it appears, are not the Ministry’s strongest suit and to date, Lands and Housing senior officials mumble about technical reports done by the University of Botswana, the engagement of the Infrastructure Ministry and possible private sector consultant recruitment.

The cost to taxpayers, however, has not been gauged. Millions of Pula were spent purchasing these buildings nine years ago and some of the departments earmarked to occupy them, have subsequently spent millions more on new, safe lodgings.

The Ministry of Trade and Industry is one such department in question. The ministry had been set to occupy the Kgale Mews office but backed out, probably because an eagle-eyed employee notice cracks where there should have been none!

Today, the Trade Ministry occupies expansive, airy and exquisite offices in the Central Business District, being symbolic of the “double-impact” imprudent property purchases inflict on the taxpayer.

We reiterate the call made on Tuesday by members of the Public Accounts Committee that the ministries of Lands and Housings and Infrastructure, Science and Technology, desperately need to get their act together.

The two ministries seem to have not received the memo that every other Motswana has received: that public revenues are low and declining and that each and every single taxpayer thebe should go further than before.

Today’s thought

“Restoring responsibility and

accountability is essential to the economic

and fiscal health of our nation.”

 

 – Carl Levin