Government has said it will review the $500 million (about K400 billion) Salima\u2013 Lilongwe water pipeline project in light of reports that a feasibility study for the much-touted project is yet to be done despite the contractor, Khato Holdings Limited, said to have already spent millions of kwacha before commencement of the project.<\/p>\n
Finance Minister, Goodall Gondwe, said in an interview yesterday that the authorities will have to find a way on how to deal with the issue of feasibility study since contract for the multi billion kwacha projects was already entered into.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Chairperson of Khato Holdings Limited, Simbi Phiri has reportedly claimed that $56 million has already been spent on the project in procuring equipment among others.<\/p>\n
Gondwe, nonetheless, backed the initial arrangement of awarding the contract before the study arguing that in some instances such things do happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cCertainly, we will have to do a review. What I mean is that we will have to deal with the question of feasibility study but I can assure you that elsewhere such cases do happen,\u201d Gondwe said.<\/p>\n
He said that government is yet to decide on which financier to fund the project adding that there are a number of investors that government will have to pick from, and that once the process is finalised people will be informed.<\/p>\n
But sources close to the deal say that the Development Bank of Southern Africa is being courted to fund the project.<\/p>\n
Spokesperson for Khato Ltd, Taonga Botolo, refused to comment, saying government officials and Lilongwe Water Board (LWB), are better placed to comment.<\/p>\n
LWB Chief Executive Officer, Alfonso Chikuni, was also not immediately available for comment as his phone went unanswered despite several attempts.<\/p>\n
But in an earlier interview with The Daily Times<\/em>, Chikuni spoke in defence of the arrangement arguing that the agreement between the contractor and his office was that the feasibility study would be done after the contract was signed.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to emphasise that no Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was done because that would mean a lot of time could be spent on the study. Yet we all know that we need the water very badly.<\/p>\n He, however, did not elaborate on when \u2018an imminent water crisis\u2019 will hit the capital city if nothing is done in haste to reverse the situation.<\/p>\n It is expected that 50 million litres of water will be supplied per day in Lilongwe once the project which will cover 125 kilometers is finalised.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Attorney General Kalekeni Kaphale has also told the media that he wants a review of some details of the contract and has already offered his legal opinion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Government has said it will review the $500 million (about K400 billion) Salima\u2013 Lilongwe water pipeline project in light of reports that a feasibility study for the much-touted project is yet to be done despite the contractor, Khato Holdings Limited, said to have already spent millions of kwacha before commencement of the project. Finance Minister, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":43378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43377"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43379,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43377\/revisions\/43379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}