BCC purchases equipment, starts developing stands

Vusumuzi Dube, Online News Editor
THE Bulawayo City Council (BCC) has started purchasing plant and equipment which will see it taking over the development of residential and commercial land as well as rehabilitating dilapidated road infrastructure.

The development is expected to remedy the city’s housing backlog which stands at over 150 000 and has been further exacerbated by a number of private developers who have been abandoning their projects leaving the local authority with the task of completing them.

This has left beneficiaries and the Bulawayo City Council at loggerheads after the latter demanded that the former pays for the completion of the projects using hard cash. According to a report from the director of engineering services, Engineer Sikhumbuzo Ncube, the local authority has resolved to secure $3 billion for the purchase of earth moving machine meant for stands development and road rehabilitation.

“The department of engineering services requests for authority to virement capital funds to cover the purchase of earthmoving plant which has recently been advertised and suppliers are currently shipping the plants which will need to be paid within 30 days,” reads the report.

The earth-moving machinery that has been purchased include; batching plant and materials ($656 million), Bitumen distributor and chip spreader ($564,1 million), front-end loader ($131,2 million), motorised grader ($223 million), pavement construction recycler ($295,2 million), road paver ($164 million), skid steer and accessories ($157,4 million), motorised grader ($381 million), front end loader ($169 million) and a hydraulic excavator ($320 million).

The last time, the local authority bought its own plant and equipment was in 2015, when they purchased road rehabilitation equipment worth more than $1 million to improve the city’s road network. Contacted for comment, Bulawayo Mayor, Councillor Solomon Mguni lauded the purchase of the plant and equipment saying this would go a long way in reducing the costs of hiring and outsourcing as well as leaving the task of housing delivery to private developers.

“It’s all in an attempt to improve efficiency in service delivery by retooling the engineering services department; which will see us replacing old plant and equipment which was facing constant breakdown. We want to be able to do our roads and service housing and commercial stands in-house so that we reduce the costs of hiring plant and equipment and outsourcing housing delivery to private developers and infrastructure development to contractors, who in most cases have been shortchanging council,” said Clr Mguni.

The local authority is reportedly targeting the servicing of Killarney East and Emganwini Phase 4 with its own equipment.