14 Sep 2016

Permanent secretary in the Ministry of Transport and Communication,  Mr Neil Fitt says Output and Performance-Based Road Contracts (OPRCs) save government costs.

Mr Fitt said during a tour of a road project in Phitshane-Molopo on Monday (September 12) that OPRCs was a new initiative, which allowed the contractor to be innovative and experimental with local material, ultimately saving costs. 

Unlike with other projects where the contractor struggles to get materials in most cases outside the country, he said with OPRCs the contractor had to experiment with what they had locally and produce quality designed road.

According to Mr Fitt, OPRCs was a 10-year pilot project under the Botswana Integrated Transport Project (BITP) funded by government in conjunction with World Bank (WB)

He indicated that the project covered 336 km of roads within the Southern region road network and it was divided into two package;  Lotlhakane west, Kanye, Mmathethe turnoff, Moshupa kgotla, Selokolela kgotla, Sese kgotla, Sesung and Moshana kgotla as package one.

He said package two covers 160 km of main road starting at Rakhuna A1 junction through Tlhareseleele to Pitsane A1 junction, from Pitsane to Phitshane-Molopo and through to Mabule.  

The road project, Mr Fitt said would also include access roads to the kgotla in villages such as Rakhuna, Tlhareseleele, Pitsane, Cwaanyaneng, Tswagare, Mokgomane, Sedibeng, Pitshane-Molopo, Leporung, Dikhukhung, Mmakgori, Tshidilamolomo and Mabule.

Giving the status of the project, chief roads engineer, Mr Botshelo Maedza said there was progress in both packages. He said maintenance works, designs for required rehabilitation and improvement works for the whole project networks started in May 2014 and was completed in December 2014 and January 2015 for packages one and two respectively.

He said their completion paved way for the rehabilitation and construction works for both packages in July 2015. The construction of the road works for both packages, Mr Maedza said was expected to be complete in July 2017 as a two-year construction period.

Mr Maedza indicated that 26km had been completed for package two from the 160km target and 15km of finished road had been completed in package one, indicating that construction works were currently on going on 44km on package two and 60km on package one. 

While construction work was ongoing, he noted that road maintenance works were also carried out on sections not under construction. Although there was progress on the project, Mr Maedza indicated that there were challenges as negotations to compensate some people who were affected by the projects took long. 

However, he noted that the WB had a procedure to follow when it comes to compensating land owners and that some roads had not yet started because negotiations were still ongoing.

Mr Maedza also noted that the contractor overlooked resources when the project started adding that they had since rectified the matter and had increased resources.

On the benefits of the OPRCs, Mr Maedza said the idea was to satisfy the road user and provide comfort and safety. 

Therefore he said during construction, workmanship and materials requirements were monitored for compliance to project specifications; and that routine and periodic maintenance were also monitored in the 10-year period for which penalties were applied if performance criteria was not complied with. ENDS