NRWB asks MPs to finalise Mzimba project probe
Northern Region Water Board (NRWB) has asked parliament to swiftly conclude investigations into suspicious pricing of Mzimba water and sanitation project.
On Monday, NRWB acting director of technical services Asumani Ungwe told members of the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture and Irrigation during a site visit in Mzimba that financiers are following the case.
The water utility was under probe for raising the contract price for Sawa Group from $10.1 million (about KK7.5 billion) stipulated in the contractor’s bid to $14.7 million (about K11 billion).
The committee’s report will be presented and adopted in Parliament next month.
“The financiers are not necessarily pressurising us to conclude this matter, but the issue was in the media. The financiers read those stories and want to know how the issue has ended. We gave Parliament information and all we are looking for is what they found,” said Ungwe.
The case has not affected civil works in any way, he said.
Chairperson of the parliamentary committee, Joseph Chidanti Malunga, said: “We had to find out exactly how this happens and if you correct it, what are the implications. The law is very silent on how we go about this. In the end, we said probably we have to review [the laws] so that in future there has to be a limit in terms of how much you can call an arithmetic error.”
Mzimba Integrated Urban Water and Sanitation Project is financed by the African Development Bank (AfDB), Opec Fund for International Development (Ofid) and government to the tune of $22.85million. n
