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Midlands Correspondent
GWERU City Council has been forced to cancel its $1.1 million electronic parking system tender after the State Procurement Board (SPB) raised a red flag arguing that the company, which had won the bid did not meet the tender specifications.
The new system was supposed to replace the erratic manual system, which has roundly been condemned by motorists for indiscriminate clamping of cars.
The joint venture partnership worth $1.1 million entered between council and a local company, Zemqos to roll out an automated pre-paid parking system has collapsed.
Acting town clerk, Mr Edgar Mwedzi said council will proceed by calling for request for proposals.
He said: “We had several bidders for the electronic parking system, which we had intended to roll out this year but unfortunately the bidders wanted a public private partnership arrangement where we work together rather than a contract in terms of installing the system.”
“According to the SPB the responses were not as per our advertisement and therefore we had to cancel the deal with Zemqos. We’ve therefore drafted a request for proposals document, which the SPB is seized with. In this request for proposals the bidders will come forward and indicate how they would want to work together with us,” added Mr Mwedzi.
He said once the response from the SPB is conveyed, council will flight the request for proposals in the media.
The electronic parking system was expected to plug out financial leakages through corruption, which the local authority had been experiencing since the introduction of the prepaid parking system in 2012.
At a special full council meeting held in April last year councillors noted that there were many irregularities in the council’s pre-parking system.
It costs a dollar to park a car for an hour in the Central Business District while the costs of clamping are $30 and $80 for towing away clamped vehicles.
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