Minister of Youth and Sports Uchizi Mkandawire says his ministry will engage contractor of the Griffin Saenda Sports Complex to consider completing the project as they look at ways of how to clear a K7.2 billion debt they have with the firm.
He was responding to a question on whether the K2.6 billion allocated towards the project will be enough to finish the works.
Said the minister: “The work that is left is very little, it involves glazing the building, connecting the water and electricity and other minor works to make the facility usable.
“But we owe the contractor [China Civil Engineering Construction Company] a huge amount of money. So, we want to negotiate with them to finish the project so that we can see how best to clear the debt.
“The contractor used his money to do most of the works and we owe him a substantial amount.
“So, this is to do with the availability of resources.”
On the Aquatic Centre, Mkandawire said the K1 billion allocated for the project will be used to finalise the swimming pools to make them usable.
In a separate interview, the ministry’s spokesperson Macmillan Mwale said: ““We expect the K2.6 billion allocated in the 2025/26 National Budget [towards the sports complex] to be paid to the contractor as part payment. We are hopeful that the contractor will use part of the money to complete the project.
The sports complex and Aquatic Centre projects have stalled for two years.
Ironically, Netball Association of Malawi has earmarked the sports complex to host the Africa Netball Championship scheduled for December.
NAM president Vitumbiko Gubuduza said the issue was discussed with the ministry when they met in January this year.
“We presented our case on the need to have the Griffin Saenda arena completed for us to be able to host not just the Africa Netball Cup, but high-ranking national netball teams as well,” she said then.
The sports complex project stalled because the contract sum changed from the initial K7 billion to about K15 billion after the scope of work changed to accommodate more sports codes such as basketball, volleyball, lawn and table tennis as well as handball while initially, it was only supposed to have netball.
The other reason was the 44 percent devaluation of the kwacha in November 2023.
President Lazarus Chakwera laid a foundation stone for the sports complex in March 2021 and said the project could be completed by August 2022, but three years down the line it is still work in progress.
