Finance Ministry, BHC suffer embarrassment

As Contractor fails to honour agreement

An innovation by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development to boost the Botswana Housing Cooperation ( BHC) coffers ended in embarrassment as the contractor failed to meet his obligation. In its attempt to take the services to the people, the MFED engaged BHC in an empowerment move to look for a construction company to supervise as well as build a revenue office in Machaneng village in the Central District at a cost of P5million.

BHC in turn engaged the services of a local contractor to do the project in 2019 at an estimated cost of P5million, but three years down the line there is nothing, and the people of Machaneng, which is the home of one of the biggest prisons in the country, as well as those from surrounding villages still have to travel long distances for such services.

The project was delayed due to underperformance by the original contractor engaged by BHC, who has since been terminated.

Currently both the MFED and BHC are discussing the way forward. Serame told Parliament that the Ministry is planning to complete the works in- house by use of Ministry of Infrastructure and Housing ( MIH) technical supervision. “The Ministry will mitigate some of the challenges by accelerating the procurement process in the next financial year”.

On Tuesday, when presenting her proposals of the financial year 2022/ 2023 Recurrent and Development Budget proposals for her ministry, Minister Serame proposed a budget allocation of P2 701 254 923 which represents an increase of 110 percent over the Financial Year 2021/ 2022 approved budget of P1 283 519 024. She said from this amount, the recurrent budget amounts to P2 389 836 89 or 88.5 percent, while the Development Budget amounts to P311 418 033 or 11.5 percent.