Construction audits start to bear fruit - Swartz

LERATO MALEKE
Correspondent | Tuesday March 26, 2013 00:00

 

Presenting the ministry's budget proposals to Parliament recently, the minister said in the past, he has highlighted many of the challenges besieging the construction sector that are now in the public domain due to extensive media coverage. 

'The quality audit teams put in place to inspect projects during construction and before takeover of facilities by government have resulted in drastic reductions in the number of call-outs compared to the past when projects were accepted without any audits,' he said. He stated that from December 2010 to date, the audit teams recorded 62,717 minor and major defects from 118 facility inspections. This represents an average of 531.5 defects per inspection, all of which would have been overlooked without the audits. The defects would have been eventually discovered after takeover of these projects, as both contractors and consultants would have declared them practically complete and ready for handover to government.

Meanwhile, the proposed allocations to the ministry under the recurrent and development budgets for 2013-2014 is P806.1 million. Swartz said the ministry headquarters requests P82.9 million or 16 percent of the total budget.This is an increase from the P10.5 million or 15 percent the headquarters got last year. The proposed budget for the Department of Building and Engineering Services (DBES) is P409.5 million. The minister said the amount is high due to the fact that the maintenance of government facilities has been centralised and put under the ministry. Of the total departmental budget, P207.5 million is for personal emoluments and P156.8 million is for maintenance of government facilities. Other expenditure will get P45.1 million.