Contractors losing tenders due to infighting
MANZINI - The infighting within Eswatini Contractors Association (ECA) is starting to have financial implications on some contractors as it is costing them tenders.
This is because some contractors claim they have been running up and down trying to re-register with ECA, but their efforts were in vain as there were allegedly some conditions that were attached to the registration process; withdrawing affidavits from a pending court case and resigning from the normalisation committee.
As such, the contractors in question claimed that since they had not registered with ECA, there was no way they could get a certificate from the Construction Industry Council (CIC), which meant they could not bid for tenders.
Appointment
The infighting at ECA started some years ago and things got worse when the organisation was supposed to submit names to CIC for the appointment into the CIC Board. Concerned contractors convened a meeting after discovering that the national executive committee (NEC) of ECA had submitted names of candidates, allegedly without their knowledge.
During that meeting, they passed a vote of no confidence against the NEC, elected a normalisation committee and candidates to be submitted for appointment to the CIC Board. However, they were told that the Minister of Public Works and Transport had already issued a gazette, confirming members of the Board and they included those who were submitted by the ECA NEC. This decision was challenged in court.
Prior to this, in March 2021, CIC suspended ECA for allegedly failing to adhere to some of the council’s requirements and informed its members that it should make payment directly to the organisation. After the suspension, the members of ECA stopped paying subscriptions to the organisation.
However, recently, CIC rescinded its decision to suspend ECA and advised contractors that in order to get the 2023/23 certificates from council, they should ensure that they were members who were in good standing with the contractors association.
When they approached the association, they were informed that they were no longer members of the organisation as they had failed to pay subscriptions in 2021 and 2022. They were told that if they wanted to be members of the organisation, they should register again and would be registered as new members, which was something that did not sit well with them, such that they approached the CIC for intervention. They asked for the intervention because they were not prepared to join ECA as new members.
Approached
Later on, the source said some of them approached the ECA offices to register and they successfully did so. However, he said when some of them approached the association with the sole purpose of registering, they were allegedly told that they should withdraw their affidavits from a pending case of the contractors, against the ECA.
“I was also told to write a letter to resign from the normalisation committee before I can re-register,” the source said.
Thereafter, the affected contractor said they had since reported the matter to the normalisation committee because CIC demanded that they should be members of ECA, who were in good standing.
“As we speak, we are losing out on tenders because we are not registered with ECA, which means that CIC will not recognise us,” the affected contractor said.
They said without the CIC certificate, they did not qualify to bid for any tender and that was costing them a lot as they had bills to pay. They added that soon, this would affect their employees because without jobs, they would not be able to keep them.
Meanwhile, the normalisation committee’s Chairman Isaac Magagula confirmed that they received the complaints from some of the contractors, some of whom signed affidavits that were attached to their court papers against the NEC of the association. The chairman said they engaged CIC and sought its intervention regarding the matter.
Efforts of getting a comment from CIC Acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Machawe Mnisi proved futile. A questionnaire was sent to him, but by the time of compiling this report yesterday afternoon, he had not responded to the questions. One of the questions was aimed at finding out if the matter was reported by ECA and what action had it taken to try and address it.
It is worth noting that when responding to a previous questionnaire, the CEO confirmed that his office received a letter from the normalisation committee, where it asked for its intervention regarding the fate of their membership at ECA.
Suspension
However, he said as a council, they believed if the suspension of members referred to was done within the ambits of the association’s Constitution, then they had to be cognisant of that fact in their approach to dealing with the matter.
He added that as a council, they were working towards addressing prevalent issues that impacted the stability of the industry. However, he mentioned that it might be premature to divulge for now what was being done to address the issues at hand.
Stakeholders
He said stakeholders would be informed in due course about the position once all avenues had been explored and addressed.
Also, efforts were made to get a comment from ECA NEC Chairman Ruben Msibi, but by the time of compiling this report, he had not responded to questions which were sent by this publication to him. The chairman was asked if it was true that the organisation demanded that some contractors should resign from the normalisation committee before being registered as new members of the association.