Malawi Government is withholding last payment for some contractors who were faulted for poor quality work when constructing houses for medical workers under the Umoyo Housing Project, Weekend Nation has learnt.
Weekend Nation
has learnt that government is withholding the remaining five percent payments for contractors who are yet to rectify defects such as cracks and leakages in the houses they constructed several years ago.
In his submission to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) ofParliament, Principal Secretary for Ministry of Health Dr. Charles Mwansambo says poor workmanship on the houses mainly resulted from inadequate capacity of the ministry’s project’s implementation unit(PIU) to monitor implementation of the first phase of the project.
The first phase of the project targeted construction of 250 new medical staff houses and rehabilitation of another 250 old houses.
“In all the sites where defects were not corrected, contractors have not been paid their retention money which is equivalent to five percent of their contract,” reads Mwansambo’s submission.
Auditor General’s findings for the financial year ended June 2011 revealed that most of the completed houses under the project developed cracks and started leaking shortly after completion and that construction work on some laboratories was abandoned before completion.
“This showed lack of seriousness on the part of the Ministry of Health and the hired consultants as they did not make regular monitoring visits to check the progress and quality of construction works and materials used at the project sites,” reads the report of the auditfindings.
Mwansambo said the ministry’s PIU had no staff during the 2008/09financial year, saying the ministry relied on a coordination unit under their planning department which, he said, failed to monitor implementation of the project effectively.
“The process of creating a fully staffed and operational coordination unit was slow and with lack of proper handovers from the previous PIU team, the ministry had no full capacity in monitoring all the projects and heavily relied on private consultants. The poor handovers also created gaps in the smooth transition of projects and general documentation.
“In addition, the DHOs were not involved in the supervision and oversight of the project activities. As a result, the workmanship was of low quality,” reads Mwansambo’ssubmission.
