Malawi Building, Civil Engineering and Allied Trade Association (Mabcata) members have threatened to take charge of Chingeni and Kalinyeke tollgates on the M1 tomorrow to push for payment of their arrears in excess of K50 billion.
But the Roads Fund Administration (RFA) has warned that it will take legal action against the contractors’ planned action.
In an interview yesterday, Mabcata-Blantyre Chapter executive member Alex Chimwala said the association will proceed with its plans to take over tollgates operation because RFA’s delay to pay them has greatly affected their businesses.
He said: “All what they [RFA] are saying is that they don’t have money, so we will just open the tollgates so that we should suffer together.
“Even though they [RFA] have threatened to sue us, we will proceed with our plans to take over the tollgates. If they want to shoot us, let them shoot. We are not afraid because we are already dead. We are suffering. Our employees are also suffering.”
But in a letter responding to Mabcata’s intention to take over the tollgates, RFA chief executive officer Stewart Malata expressed concern with the move.
He said while they contractors are owed money in respect of delivered contracts, the intended actions will not address the matter.
Reads the letter in part: “On our part, in view of the threat to the security and safety of the tolling infrastructure, staff and revenues, we are proceeding to have a recourse to legal action for purposes of securing and safeguarding our tolling staff, tolling infrastructure and the tolling revenue.
“We are also engaging the relevant law enforcement agencies to ensure no criminal activities take place at the tollgates as intended by yourselves and your membership, as the intended acts are criminal, in our view.”
From September 3 to 6, the indigenous contractors conducted a vigil at RFA offices in Lilongwe to push for over K50 billion the fund owes them.
The association clarified that the amount reached K50 billion when they factored in a 40 percent increase in project cost escalations following the kwacha devaluation in November last year.
RFA spokesperson Masauko Mngwaluko is on record as having said that the delay in payments is due to the Malawi Energy Regulatory Authority’s (Mera) failure to remit the road maintenance levy.
However, he said RFA owes indigenous contractors implementing RA projects K11.8 billion.
In July this year, RFA also bemoaned Mera’s failure to remit road levies, saying it was affecting its capacity to fund the maintenance of roads, including the M1.
Speaking when the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament inspected M1 maintenance works on the section between Chingeni and Zalewa funded by tollgates collections, Malata said the administration is not accessing the road levy to fund road maintenance works. As of March 2024, RFA was owed K104 billion in road levies.
