More woes for Rumphi Stadium project

One month has passed since construction work stopped at the site of Rumphi Stadium which was scheduled to be ready for use by August 2016.

Chinese firm, Hualong Construction, is building the stadium with K341 million funding from Local Development Fund (LDF).

It is one of the five stadium construction projects government is implementing with a K1.9 billion grant from Germany government.

Rumphi Stadium construction works started in November 2015, but it has been delayed to date.

Rumphi district council director of public works Allan Chitete said in an interview that the contractors have boycotted the project site now for a month.

“We just learnt that there is contractual disagreement between the funders—LDF and the contractors—Hualong,” he said.

Chitete said only the brick fence can be appreciated at the site.

“Actually, a lot is yet to be done on the site. We still have a long way if the facility is to be ready for use with the current progress. A water pump is yet to be installed. There are no stands, no running track and the pitch is still bare” he said.

But Hualong Construction spokesperson Jason Deng said they are done with construction operations in the contractual agreement.

“We are done with many operations at the site. It should be clear that we only focused on those operations spelled out in the contractual agreement. We had a handover meeting with LDF and anytime from now, we will hand it over,” he said.

LDF director of urban development Mike Moyo confirmed about the handover meeting with the contractors, but was quick to state that some works are yet to be finished to warrant the handover.

“Of course, the handover meeting can be there. However, we communicated to them that there are still some work that needs to be completed before the handover as recommended by our consultant on that project,” he said. n