It has emerged that the Marine Department terminated the Nkhata Bay Port Jetty and Bridge Rehabilitation Project contract on mutual understanding in October 2013, after paying the contractor over K28 million for the work that did not tally with the amount.<\/p>\n
Correspondence between the then Principal Secretary for the Ministry of Transport and Public Works Rexie Chiluzi and Director of Marine Services Laston Makuzula, dated December 9 2013, indicates that Chiluzi acknowledged that the decision to terminate the contract on mutual understanding was reached prematurely.<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Transport had paid the contractor K28, 765,796.56 at the time of parting ways.<\/p>\n
In the correspondence, Ref No ADM\/400\/2\/20, Chiluzi indicates that the progress report submitted by the supervising engineer and ministry team before and after the contractor had left the site revealed that there were several critical works, as specified in the Bills of Quantities, which the contractor did not attend to.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn addition, both technical and financial assessments made on the [sic] contract implementation without taking into account of [sic] the revised contract sum as estimated by the contractor revealed that the amount [sic] of works done so far was not commensurate with the amount of money which was already paid to the contractor and that the meeting was of the view that the contractor could have done more with the money paid to him than was the case,\u201d the correspondence reads.<\/p>\n
Chiluzi was reacting to the contract discussion minutes for a meeting that took place on October 30 2013, at which the Marine Department, some ministry officials and Managing Director for the contractor, North Works Limited, a W. Mhango, resolved to terminate the contract without undue liabilities to either party.<\/p>\n
The meeting, also attended by Makuzula, agreed that the contractor was supposed to handover all unused materials to the client.<\/p>\n
According to minutes for the meeting, the participants were aware of the need to maintain a good working relationship between the contractor and the client, apart from recognising that the contractor was awarded the contract when the kwacha had been heavily devalued.<\/p>\n
The minutes also indicate that the members were aware that the contractor had done 60 percent of designated work after the decision to devalue the kwacha.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this regard, the contractor was advised to make the handover to Marine Department as opposed to Nkhata Bay port staff as the latter no longer work for the government. Members agreed to arrange for [sic] site handover meeting in the shortest possible [sic] time,\u201d the Marine Department meeting minutes read.<\/p>\n
But in an interview, Makuzula said the contractor moved out of the site after completing what he was assigned to do.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr Mhango was contracted to do certain things on the bridge and he finished whatever he was told to do. So, it is not true that the contract was prematurely terminated,\u201d Makuzula said.<\/p>\n
He also said, after completion of his assigned work, the contractor asked the department to hire him for other activities but the department had already identified Mota Engil\u2019s Malawi Ports Company as a concessionaire\u2014 meaning that the company would be responsible for rehabilitation works.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe concessionaire started working on the project in February this year and it [work] is progressing well,\u201d Makuzula said.<\/p>\n
Many ports across the country are in dilapidated state and Makuzula said the concessionaire is working on improving such infrastructure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It has emerged that the Marine Department terminated the Nkhata Bay Port Jetty and Bridge Rehabilitation Project contract on mutual understanding in October 2013, after paying the contractor over K28 million for the work that did not tally with the amount. Correspondence between the then Principal Secretary for the Ministry of Transport and Public Works […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":43664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43661","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\/43661","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=43661"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43665,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43661\/revisions\/43665"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}