NCC NODS SHUMEITE PROJECT

By BENNIE MUNDANDO THE National Council for Construction (NCC) says the Chinese company erecting a mall in Lusaka’s Kalundu residential area has been granted permission to resume construction after meeting all the benchmarks which they had flouted at the beginning of the project.

Confirming Daily Nation reports that Shumeite Investment Limited had its design for the mall in Chinese contrary to construction regulations, NCC public relations officer Chama Mwansa said the council had permitted the company to resume its works.

In a statement confirming that Shumeite had been given permission to go ahead and construct its four-storey mall which was halted a few months ago, Ms. Mwansa, said NCC had initially suspended works on the project until the owners registered it, provided drawings in English, and engaged a qualified consultant.

Ms. Mwansa said currently, the company had met all the requirements and that the council and other stakeholders had no objection to the project after all the approvals were made.

“NCC received concerns from the public regarding the proposed development of the business facility in Kalundu by Shumeite Investments Limited. In this regard, NCC constituted a team of inspectors to investigate the claim. The team established that the project had some irregularities that needed to be resolved as far as the NCC man- date was concerned.

“To this end, NCC suspended works on the site as the contractor was not in compliance with the NCC Act No. 13 of 2003 and advised the contractor to meet all requirements under the same Act, these were relating to registering the project in line with the registration of projects SI no. 39 of 2015. The company was also required to provide drawings and designs that were in English as the ones the contractor had were in Chinese as well as engaging a qualified registered consultant on site,” Ms. Chama said.

She said the council was committed to ensuring sustainable infrastructure development.

“We wish to confirm that Shumeite Investments Limited has since met the NCC require- ments. In addition, they were requested to ensure that the necessary approvals from other relevant bodies were obtained.

“As NCC, we therefore wish to state that we have no further objection to the implementation of the project. We remain committed to sustainable infrastructure development,” Ms. Chama said.

However, Kalundu residents have remained adamant saying the city council has been playing double standards over the area’s mixed development zone as some developers were requested to follow the laid down procedure while it had to take their intervention for Shumeite to rectify the anomaly and allowed to build even without a public opinion on the development.