Tshesebe-Masunga road work delays frustrate residents
Mpho Mokwape | Friday February 26, 2021 16:07
In a new twist, the road upgrade that the residents welcomed as a well deserved development has now turned into legal battles that have delayed the work, even now.
According to court documents, residents are frustrated by the ongoing delay while their road’s condition keeps worsening.
The delay that seems to be far from over can be traced from the date, January 23, 2019 when the Ministry of Transport and Communications through the Roads Department issued out an invitation to tender for works to upgrade the Tshesebe-Mosojane-Masunga raod including access roads to a higher standard.
Then, the tender was issued to selected bidders and after a three stage evaluation two construction companies being, Landmark Projects and Van&Truck Hire were recommended as a joint venture by a procuring entity to Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Board (PPADB).
“PPADB did not accept the said recommendation and the reason advanced for such rejection was that the companies being the joint venture had been given an Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP) project before, namely the construction of Thalamabele veterinary Gate to Mosu road and therefore could not benefit twice from ESP projects,” reads the documents.
Reportedly, after the rejection of the two companies, the procuring entity came up with a new recommendation, this time recommending the joint venture of Bango Trading and Zebra construction.
Further according to the documents after the rejection of the first recommended companies, they were dissatisfied with the rejection of the recommendation in their favour appealed to the Independent Complaints Review Committee which subsequently revoked and set aside the recommendation to award the tender to the second recommended companies.
While this many back and forth was ongoing the other bidder also being cul de Sac also put its own appeal to the committee challenging the decision of PPADB’ to have the tender awarded to the joint venture Bango Trading and Zebra Construction whose appeal was dismissed in December 3, 2019. The documents have revealed that all these legal appeals delayed the awarding of the tender and gave rise to court battles with each construction company trying to fight for its right to get the multi-million tender.
Now what is making the residents of the three villages angry is that the road upgrade was supposed to have been started in 2016 as the now disputed tender was awarded to another company that failed to do the work and the tender was withdrawn and re-issued in 2019.
A look at the documents indicates that the tender was initially floated in 2016 and was awarded to Bash Carriers, but the company then failed to complete the project.
“The contract was terminated and inevitably a re-tender was called and many previous bidders were invited to resubmit their bids,” read the papers.
Consequently, the legal tussle has delayed the works on the road since 2016, and it doesn’t seem as the war is over as more court cases are resurfacing as a results of the disputes on the tender and residents can only hope and wait. Meanwhile, the companies fighting to win the tender are are Bango Trading, Zebra Construction, Landmark Projects and Van&Truck Hire who are all cited as respondents in the High Court matter that was before Judge Michael Leburu together with the committee, PPADB and Attorney General.