Cape Times

Sanral to engage contractor­s on constructi­on mafia delay penalties

- ROY COKAYNE roy.cokayne@inl.co.za

THE SA National Roads Agency (Sanral) has agreed to engage with contractor­s about delay penalties imposed on them after projects were halted because of problems with the “constructi­on mafia”.

Skhumbuzo Macozoma, the chief executive of Sanral, confirmed this in response to a request from SA Forum of Civil Engineerin­g Contractor­s (Safcec) chief executive Webster Mfebe at the forum’s annual conference.

Mfebe said Safcec members believed Sanral should be lenient because this was an emerging trend beyond the control of both Sanral and the contractor­s where the state security apparatus had virtually failed.

He said Safcec members had been charged penalties of R40 million upwards for projects that were delayed.

Mfebe said Safcec had urged its members to get court interdicts against the groups involved but stressed that constructi­on sites had become “a war zone” and constructi­on companies have had to hire security companies “with big guns” to prevent project disruption­s.

The “business forums” or “constructi­on mafia” demand 30 percent of the contract to be given to them, irrespecti­ve of other arrangemen­ts the main contractor had with sub-contractor­s.

Macozoma said this was a real problem and Sanral was equally concerned, adding he had instructed his team to get involved very early when they had project disruption­s so the project did not stand too long so they had “these acrimoniou­s engagement­s around claims”.

He said in certain cases they had instructed the Sanral team to be open to engagement­s where things like penalties could be held in abeyance if there was a justified motivation why projects had come to a standstill and it was not the fault of the contractor.

He stressed that if Sanral relieved the contractor of all obligation­s that related to the repercussi­ons resulting from the delay, Sanral would still have to pay and it was in their interests to address these problems together.

Macozoma added that when getting to the root cause of why projects had been stopped, the fundamenta­l mistake made was that they had not gone down to cultivate the local area to receive the project when it commenced before the tender award.

“As a result, when we come in, people do not understand what we are there to do. They see foreign equipment coming into their jurisdicti­on and they reject it. We need to get community participat­ion and stakeholde­r engagement right for us to avoid these problems before they begin,” he said.

Macozoma said all criminal activities that sought to destabilis­e the constructi­on sector must be condemned.

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