Contractor fired after no work done since May
BUFFALO City Metro has terminated its contract with a Johannesburgbased company tasked with upgrading Mdantsane’s Qumza Highway and appointed another to finish the multimillion-rand project.
The decision was taken at a council meeting this week, when council approved a viament (transfer) of the R98-million budget from Nyoni Projects, which failed to carry out the work, to Down Touch Investments. Down Touch Investments will now have to wrap up the project.
The Sandton-based Nyoni projects won a R127-million tender for the project in June 2016. At the time, the upgrades were expected to be completed by September this year.
However, the project stalled, frustrating motorists and residents as the road has been closed – with no work taking place since May last year.
Municipal manager Andile Sihlahla said the company experienced a lot of challenges, including entering into business rescue due to debt.
As a result, the report states there has been no meaningful work done since May 2017.
Sihlahla said the metro was only informed about Nyoni’s financial woes a month later.
“To date, the total progress according to approved construction programme is about 31% and with 64% of time lapsed.
“Despite every effort to facilitate the completion of the contract, the assistance from ourselves and the engineer, no meaningful work or activities to bring the project to practical completion has taken place.
“The contractor has thus failed to show due diligence in undertaking to complete the work,” said Sihlahla in the letter dated December 8 2017.
The company was then given 14 days to respond, or have the contract terminated last December. When no response was received, the metro pulled out of the contract immediately thereafter.
At the time the only work which had been done was repairing of driveways and stormwater.
Nyoni Projects is the second company which got booted out of the multi-million Mdantsane roads upgrade. The Dispatch reported earlier this month that mayor Xola Pakati announced that the city had also pulled the plug on Diphatse Contractor, a controversial construction company that was under-qualified for the upgrades.
The metro had divided the contract into three clusters, leaving a company called Down Touch Investment (Pty) Ltd, as the only one meeting the expectations.
The report tabled and adopted on Wednesday reveals that Nyoni only did 34% of the work while Down Touch Investments, which was appointed at the same time as Nyoni Projects managed to finish 89.3% of the job.
“This report seeks to motivate for Down Touch Investments to take over the remaining scope of work on areas where work had already started for the upgrading of Mdantsane roads cluster phase 3,” the accounting officer said. —