09 Aug 2015

The Minister of Infrastructure, Science and Technology, Nonofho Molefhi, says although his ministry bore the final responsibility for the late delivery of the Francistown Stadium, the private sector let them down.

He made the remarks during the handover of the state of the art facility to the Ministry of Youth, Sport and Culture on Thursday (August 6). The project, which started in 2008 and was initially scheduled to be completed in 2010, took seven years to complete.

Initially, the minister explained that the project was budgeted at P175 million, but due to poor workmanship, the ministry was forced to terminate the contract. After the termination of the initial contract and awarding of work to new contractors, the project cost escalated from P175 million to almost P299 million.

The minister highlighted that they were under pressure from residents and politicians who wanted to know when the facility would be completed. 

“I am happy to receive it from contractors and hand it over to the relevant ministry. From today, we will be asking residents of Francistown how effective are they utilising the stadium,” he said.

He also challenged Francistown businesses to participate in the development of sports. On other issues, the minister said his ministry noted the patience exercised by residents due to delays in completing the stadium. 

He explained that going forward, his ministry would deal thoroughly with contractors who fail to complete projects. “We are building capacity to supervise projects, and in the long run we will phase out outsourcing of these,” he said.

The minister said they would be ruthless to such contractors because many a times when projects fail, they are accused of being shareholders in such contractors. This, state of affairs, he said, was not value for money for the taxpayer.

Minister Molefhi said his ministry was introducing new reforms such as building internal capacity and registration of contractors so that they get the best people with the right credentials. 

The legislation, he said, had already seen the registration of engineers and would soon move to architects and quantity surveyors.  “We want the nation to get value for money and a return on investment for projects of such magnitude,” Minister Molefhi highlighted.

In addition, he explained that they wanted to provide young engineers with exposure by attaching them to work with experienced personnel. 

On other issues, he said the Francistown stadium project had taught them valuable lessons such as the fact that they should not fast-track projects when they do not have adequate internal capacity which could deliver quality.

However, he added that the delay in the completion of the stadium was a blessing in disguise as it allowed the ministry to add some features which were not initially in the design to make the stadium the first state of the art facility and the biggest in the country with a seating capacity of 26 500 people.

For his part, the Minister of Youth Sports and Culture, Thapelo Olopeng commended the engineers who supervised the project and contractors for completing the project. Ends