Blantyre stadium projects set to resume
Ministry of Youth and Sports says projects of the two stadiums in Blantyre are set to resume after clearing outstanding arrears amounting to billions with contractors.
For the past two years, the projects, situated in Zingwangwa and Soche Townships, stalled as contractors demanded payments.
The ministry’s spokesperson Macmillan Mwale said in an interview yesterday that having cleared the arrears, they will now review the scope of work and come up with bill of quantities.
“That is to say we need to assess the remaining works and ask for funding from the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs to continue with the projects,” he said.
“Although the projects were being funded in the past two years, there was no progress on the ground because the funds were being channelled towards settling the arrears with interest that had been accumulated since 2020.”
Mwale after the Zingwangwa project contractor, China Civil Engineering pulled out, they will need to go back to the drawing board to identify a new contractor.
He also said the contract for the Soche project contractor, Anhui Foreign Economic Construction Company, expired, but the ministry has decided to renew it.
“So, we will proceed with the necessary process,” said Mwale.
He said for the Soche project only 20 percent remains while for the Zingwangwa one, it is at only five percent.
Said Mwale: “This is because of the landscape as the Zingwangwa one is rocky unlike the Soche land which is flat.
“The other reason was that in Zingwangwa the contractor had to work on the ground for the school after the initial one was allocated for the project.
But Parliamentary Committee on Social and Community Affairs chairperson Savel Kafwafwa said they advised the ministry to concentrate on one project at a time when they met them in March this year.
“That would help other than spreading the little resources across several projects,” he said.”
Immediate-past president Peter Mutharika directed that government should construct the two stadiums for domestic football powerhouses FCB Nyasa Bullets and Mighty Mukuru Wanderers in 2019, but after the Tonse Alliance administration came into power, the ministry said government cannot construct structures for teams that are private entities.
Bullets were allocated the Zingwangwa one, which was initially estimated to cost K3.8 billion while the Soche stadium, which was allocated to Wanderer, was pegged at K3.6 billion. Initially, the stadiums were identified by the two teams’names, but are now called Zingwangwa and Soche stadiums.
