Extra P950k secured to fix Mahalapye bus rank
Council failed to do Geo- Technical Survey on project
Central District Council Chairman Ketshwereng Galeragwe says the damage at the Mahalapye bus rank was caused by the council’s failure to conduct Geo- Technical Survey at the area.
He said the problem is that there were insufficient funds to outsource technical expertise on the project in so far as the Geo- Technical Survey is concerned.
He said it is not that the council did not want to do the survey or neglected to do the survey on purpose. The council chairman explained that they are currently working on it in terms of remedial actions on the matter.
“We are going to do the survey which will guide us on what to do with the soil to cater for the heavy loads which are normally carried by our buses.
“We are going to give the survey tender to an independent contractor. We have noticed that the damage was caused by the heavy loads that use those bus bays. We want to close the area for about three weeks to fix it,” Galeragwe told the media in Mahalapye this week.
He said they have already sourced funds to rectify the damage that occurred, adding that they will be floating a tender where they would expect citizen contractors to bid for the job.
“We have since managed to secure funds for rectifying the damage caused. The remedial work will need P950 000, which we have. We will be giving this project to a citizen contractor.
“Our hope is that with the funds we managed to source, the contractor will do a proper job, within time and budget. We want to avoid cost- overruns in this project.
“We apologise for what happened and hope to at the same get accolades for the job well done in some of the projects that fall under Mahalapye Infrastructure project,” said Galeragwe, who revealed that the council already has a plot at Mowana in Mahalapye where they will in future construct a state- of- the- art bus rank.
Mahalapye Sub District Council Principal Roads Engineer who is also the Project Engineer Juluka Zambezi said what transpired is that the bus rank was constructed on the existing platform. He said they did engineering survey which was visual.
“Initially we had three bus bays. Two were okay and the third had two sections that were affected. We did excavation of the area until we were satisfied and then filled the area with boulders.
“Initially we wanted to address the issue of flooding at the bus rank. So at the time the issue of structural failure was not pronounced in the previous bus rank which guided us that there wouldn’t be need to undertake an intensified GeoTech. We were going to use the existing platform as the subgrade,” said Zambezi.
He said because of this and lack of financial resource, they could not do the Geo- Technical Survey.
The project which was done internally started in May 14th 2021 as part of Mahalapye Infrastructure development that has been funded at P57 million.
The entire infrastructure development which also covers Shoshong is expected to be completed on the 15th of this month, while the last contractor is expected to finish by end of March this year.
The bus rank was funded at P10 million while infrastructure in Shoshong among them a bridge and internal roads was funded at the tune of P47 million.