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the country’s development because of the way it awards tenders.
Appearing before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Budget, Finance and Investment Promotion on Monday, Minister Biti said the SPB was awarding tenders to undeserving bidders, some of whom were blacklisted by Government.
Goromonzi North legislator Cde Paddy Zhanda (Zanu-PF) chairs the committee.
The legislators had raised concern over the way the SPB was awarding tenders.
“The tender board has become a national crisis. They have become a fetter, ‘chikwambo chaicho’. They are busy denying development in the country,” Minister Biti said.
“The tender board is giving tenders to someone who can’t even afford an undergarment.
“The people who are being given tenders don’t have capacity because some of them come and demand that they be given deposit to do the job. But some of them even after they have been given the deposit, still don’t do the job because they don’t have capacity.”
Minister Biti said Eleco Elevator Company had been awarded a tender to install and fix elevators at Kaguvi Building despite the fact that it had been blacklisted by Government for failure to deliver.
“Kaguvi Building houses Ministers (Nicholas) Goche, (Lucia Matibenga) and others and it has 21 floors, meaning the ministers will have to walk up the stairs to the 16th floor.
“Eleco said they didn’t have money and requested the Ministry of Public Works to buy equipment so that they could just fix them.
“The equipment was bought in October 2011, but up to now they have not done anything. They keep postponing despite the fact that the employer has provided equipment.
“The question is, how does the State Procurement Board give such a company a contract?”
It is understood that some ministers based at Kaguvi Building have not used their offices for several months because the elevators are not working.
Women’s Affairs, Gender and Community Development Minister Olivia Muchena was quoted in the media last week saying they use stairs to get to their offices because
elevators at Mukwati Building, where her office is located, are not working.
Public Works Minister Joel Gabbuza yesterday also rapped the SPB for awarding tenders to inept companies.
“We wrote to the State Procurement Board telling them that we didn’t want to deal with Eleco, but they still went ahead and awarded them the tender.
“After they had been awarded the tender, they told us to buy the equipment on our own and we did that but they are still not forthcoming.
“The problem is they were made to sign a contract that would make them complete the job in 76 weeks meaning they will complete the job by December this year when they were supposed to have completed half the job last December.”
Minister Gabbuza said he had been to the company several times, but it keeps postponing.
“That company does not have capacity. They don’t even have scaffoldings and we offered them to use the ones we have at the Ministry but they are still not coming forth. There is always noise in Cabinet every Tuesday over the issue, with ministers demanding that there be elevators at Kaguvi and New Makombe buildings,” he said.
Government, Minister Biti said, has been wasting money on the Kunzvi dam project when nothing was going on. He said he visited Kunzvi Dam to check on progress and found
nothing taking place at the dam “except seeing huge snakes”.
He said it was possible that companies that had no profiles were being awarded tenders.
Cde Zhanda said there were businesspeople who knew about tenders even before they were made public.
Online Reporter