Luapula province Permanent Secretary Charles Mushota has attributed the high number of public infrastructure being brown-off by strong winds in Luapula to use of wrong specifications and poor supervision in some cases.
Eng. Mushota says it was time the province starts treating all public infrastructure as commercial buildings and ensure that those assigned to come up with designs do not compromise on standard specifications.
He observed that poor specifications at design level leads to use of wrong build materials that compromise the strength of the structure.
A number of structures especially schools have had their roofs brown off due to the wrong specifications when it comes to the gauge of the roofing sheets.
“Materials such as mortise locks and hand wash basins fitted in a commercial buildings cannot be the same like those used in a private home, but sadly I have seen fittings meant for private homes being used in commercial buildings,” Eng. Mushota pointed out.
The PS was speaking during the Senior Management Meeting following a submission by the Disaster Management Unit (DMMU) Provincial Coordinator Abel Mwape yesterday.
Stressing that his unit was overwhelmed by the number of disasters being recorded in the province, Mr Mwape told the meeting that according to a joint assessment done together with the Department of Public Infrastructure on Mwense and Nchelenge Secondary schools which were recently battered by hail storms, they requires about K4.6m to fix the damage.
And Public Infrastructure Officer Eng. Morris Bwalya has noted with sadness that a number of new public structures which were coming up in the province had some wrong specifications in the designs.
Eng. Bwalya has since appealed to those who come up with designs not to be compromising on standards specification in order to come up with good infrastructure.
He added that bids equally needed to be scrutinized for the pricing of each item to avoid compromising on the quality of materials to be used.
According to the DMMU data base, the province requires about K38m to attend to 41 primary schools, six secondary schools, six community schools, six health posts, 72 households, 31 staff houses and 283 crossing points that have been affected by hail storms.
???????… These guys are just a bunch of jokers!
Did the author write ‘brown’ implying BLOWN??????
The problem is the way contracts are procured. There is no transparency and projects are overpriced by contractors who have no experience in the field. If you give a contract to your acquaintance and party faithful’s, what do you expect to get ? These contractors do win contracts on merit but by ”who you know”, hence the contractor has no commitment to producing quality work. Until we have a transparent procurement and tendering process, we will continue to have these kind of costly complaints.
Wasnt it done by proffessionals. In other countries Engineers who worked on such projects could have been behind bars. Thats how other countries got developed. They dont tolerate nonsense. “Inchekeleku” culture is destroying the country.
It is not yet too late to knock Zambia back to normalcy quite seriously. If we allow another few years of senseless larceny however mediocrity will be a part of our signature. We need to kick professionals off their backsides and into action one way or the other.
Buluya.
Whose fault is it to oversee specifications are adhered to? Its you as the client…are you telling us if you were building a house and your foreman was using too much sand in cement mix you would just sit by and watch? You chose these contractors through your corrupt procurement and tender process…this is a clear example of total failure in systems and a true example of a kakistocracy.
Every year they complain about the same thing every year Auditor General highlights all this and every the figures the taxpayers lose gets bigger and bigger….some la7y mor@n will then raise his small fist shouting about infrastructure development.
What do you expect from a GRZ lead by a dellussional drunk preoccupied with HH , to the extent of murdering innocents ?????
It’s time to sue the company responsible or revoke their licences or else this will never charge. there are so many wrongs in this then rights so you will have the case for them to answer. and also ppl responsible for purchasing cheap materials sign contracts with unknown registered companies should be prosecuted as well, Enough is enough ppl should be deeply responsible for their own actions. let us better and improve our community with little resources at disposal available. A patriotic zambian.!!!!!!!
ENGINEER DO CLOSE SUPERVISION
These are the contracts given to PF cadres as rewards. They minimize costs through use of sub standard material to maximize profits because because they know a share of those profits will be given to people who gave them the contracts.
THIS IS THE MOST HARDWORKING , WHY WAS HE TRANSFERED TO LUAPULA? HE WAS TO REMAIN AT INFRASTRUTURE PLEASE COME BACK IN 2021 AS MINISTER NOW