21 Jul 2022

No foreign sub-contractors have been engaged in Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) projects.

Answering a question in Parliament on Wednesday, Minister of Minerals and Energy, Mr Lefoko Moagi said BPC undertook procurement in line with the new Public Procurement Act and the citizens economic empowerment schemes.

He said the act required all parastatals under the ministry to request for a waiver for tenders they intended to award foreign companies in the event services needed could not be provided by citizen owned companies.

“My ministry only grants permission for such dispensation after exhausting all the applications for any citizen companies which may or may not qualify and having assessed and assured ourselves of the motivation brought forward,” said the minister.

Mr Moagi said 11 citizen owned companies were engaged as sub-contractors in three ongoing power transmission projects, but that the main contractors were foreign companies.

He said the three projects were the Lekgotlwane- Ghanzi power line, the Tlokweng sub-station and the Mochudi - Phakalane - Gaborone North power supply reinforcement project.

He also noted that the capital nature and magnitude of the projects were at a scale that citizens companies were still being developed to undertake in the near future.

He, however, said all the distribution small works tenders were now reserved for 100 per cent citizen owned companies as per the requirement of the new Public Procurement Act.

“In the distribution works there are 69 pre-qualified of which 68 are citizen owned companies and one is a foreign company.

In addition 12 Batswana consultants are pre-qualified to undertake the distribution small works and the distribution citizen owned contractors programme,” said the minister.

Gaborone Bonnington South MP, Mr Christian Greeff had asked the minister to state how many jobs were given to foreign sub-contracts over Batswana companies by BPC, and what he was doing to ensure that parastatals under his ministry gave priority to locals. BOPA