Govt moves to fast track M1 rehabilitation

Government has awarded licences to two companies involved in the rehabilitation of the M1 for the importation of fuel and cement.

Progress of the works on the stretch between Kamuzu International Airport (KIA) Turn-Off and Mzimba Turn-Off has stagnated due to shortage of cement and fuel, which has been impacted by the forex scarcity in the country.

In an interview on Thursday after engaging stakeholders at the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) in Lilongwe, Deputy Secretary to the President and Cabinet (SPC) Janet Banda, who is also Presidential Delivery Unit (PDU) chairperson, said  the decision has been made to speed up works that have slowed down due to scarcity of the two commodities.

She said the closed-door meeting was to discuss challenges that are affecting the progress of the project.

Said Banda: “The resolution that we have made is that the constructors should be allowed to import their fuel using their own forex reserves.

“As for the forex scarcity, we have been assured by the Ministry of Finance that this will not be an issue because they will be using foreign reserves by the donor partners whose account is in foreign currency denominations.”

In a separate interview, Roads Authority chief design engineer Elias Sisya said the M1 Rehabilitation project, which was launched in July 2022, has been delayed by 13 months.

However, he said this does not automatically mean that the completion of the project’s completion will also delay by 13 months.

Said Sisya: “Following recommendations that were made by the design consultant, we are going to review the time frame and if the contractors also make a request for the review of the time frame we will do so and make changes accordingly.”

Asked which companies have been awarded the cement and fuel importation licences, Sisya referred The Nation to Mera.

When contacted, Mera asked for more time before commenting but they had not responded by press time.

The project is divided into four lots, with lot one scheduled for 30 months; lot two for 18 months; lot three for 15 months; while lot four has a 24-month time frame.

Other stakeholders to the meeting included Mera, the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Lands, Ministry of Transport and Public Works, district commissioners of Dowa and Kasungu, Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi, National Oil Company (Nocma) and contractors.

On the scarcity of forex, Banda said the meeting resolved that the contractors should use foreign denomination accounts of the donors financing the project.

Another issue was the legal requirement for foreign construction companies to subcontract 30 percent of project works to local companies.

On this, the deputy SPC said the contractors for this road project raised concerns that local companies are over pricing which is making it difficult to award them jobs.

She said: “We have resolved that we should have another meeting to discuss this. It has also been suggested that this law must be waived for this particular project to allow progress.”

Banda said the meeting agreed that it would be difficult to accept the local companies expensive bids since they would affect the costing of the project.