Mogae house defects to be fixed

CHANDAPIWA BAPUTAKI
Staff Writer | Wednesday July 28, 2010 00:00

The house, whose construction was initially budgeted at P14 million but later escalated to P20 million, was completed and handed over to government in 2008.

However, DEBS' principal public relations Morwalela Kesalopa however says with the establishment of Ministerial Technical Units (MTU) the situation should improve 'because maintenance plans will be drawn and where possible service providers would be engaged on yearly contracts to carry out routine maintenance of key installations such as air conditioning'.

Kesalopa was responding to Mmegi enquiries after Mogae's private secretary Bapasi Mphusu admitted that there were some 'nauseating problems with this property in both the residence and the office blocks. The air conditioning system has never functioned efficiently despite claims that it is a state-of-the-art system.  The place becomes very cold in winter and very hot in summer'.

Mphusu added that the general maintenance of the property 'is almost zero' despite repeated reports and appeals for assistance to the desk officer at the Office of the President (OP). 'Different teams are often sent here to carry out repairs but nothing comes out of that, defects and problems are not solved,' the former director of Information and Broadcasting Services said.

However, Kesalopa did not believe it was a waste of taxpayers' money to have such defects so early after handover but stated that the DEBS attends to raised complaints. She further said the certificate of making good defects was only issued after the supervising team as well as the end user were satisfied with the status of the house.

She admitted that since the completion of the house the department has received complaints such as the internal electrical circuitry especially lights and power points. 'DBES attended to the complaints accordingly by providing quality plug tops to the end user,' she said.

Further, she explained that monthly inspections of the works were done during construction, and two mandatory inspections were carried out. She revealed that the first inspection was done on July 23, 2007. She said when the contractor indicated that construction work was complete, including the testing and commissioning of key installations like the air conditioning system, the project supervising team from DBES undertook a thorough inspection of the house. She stated that it was only after the team was satisfied that the house was fit for occupation that the architect issued a practical completion certificate and the end user allowed to move into the house.

Kesalopa explained further that the second inspection was carried out at the end of defects liability period in September 2008. 'A detailed inspection of the house was carried out and the occupants of the house were given the opportunity to point out problematic areas that they felt needed attention. It was only after the contractor attended to all the identified defects to the satisfaction of the supervising team that a certificate of making good defects was issues,' Kesalopa said.

This was not to the satisfaction of the former president who was angry when Mmegi visited him three weeks ago that a team of electricians had gone back to their offices without fixing any electric faults. They had given the excuse that the walls were too high. 'How can they say that? How can an electrician say the walls are too high for him to fix a problem?

They have been coming here many times and I no longer have any privacy because they have even been in my bedroom more than three times already,' the former president fumed. 'I want their names and workplaces so that I can report them,' he added to his assistants who were trying very hard to assure him that the faults would be repaired.

'This is supposed to be a state of the art house, the water is being wasted because all the sprinklers are leaking. The security lights are supposed to come on when it is dark but they do not, some of them just go on for the whole day and cannot be switched off,' he said adding that the faults have been reported for the past three months and when they report they come and go back without having fixed anything. 'It is not only one who comes but three every time. They go back and claim that they were busy here,' he told Mmegi.