01 Dec 2013

Francistown councillors have expressed dissatisfaction at the Department of Building and Engineering Services (DBES) undocumented presentation on the update of the city'snew stadium which was vandalised after the contractor of the project failed to complete it on time.

They raised their concern during FCC council meeting on November 29. Tati Town councillor, Mr Stanley Masalila said they had a problem with undocumented reports because it was easy for the officer to change the verbal statement they made during the presentation. 

Mr Masalila explained that since the abandonment of the project, no information on the way forward and actions taken was ever availed to them saying they only heard through the media of the status of the project.

He further noted that it was disappointing that a project of such magnitude could be left lying idle without any monitoring. He highlighted that the community of Francistown had hope that the completion of the project would mean good things such as seeing their national team playing in the city.

He also condemned DBES for monitoring Francistown projects from Gaborone instead of relocating project managers to the places of the project. That arrangement, he said, had left majority of projects in the city either failed or incomplete. 

 He proposed that it was time that decentralisation of processes should take place so that other people apart from those in Gaborone should also reap the benefits of being Batswana.

Councillor Lazarus Tlou called on the department to put its house in order explaining that some of the factors that led to the incomplete project were as a result of poor decisions, citing that design issues were raised before the project could take off. That, he mentioned, led to questions on the approval of the design and even the start of the project.

 Also, he noted that questions were raised on the intensity of inspection during the project and commitment of DBES on projects outside Gaborone.

Meanwhile, earlier on when making his presentation, the project manager, James Rasethabi explained that since they parted ways with the contractor, they were working hard to bring on board another contractor to complete the project.

 Rasethabi said with experience from their other projects such as the National and Lobatse Stadias, they had decided to engage different companies to focus on different areas such as stands, offices and surroundings.

He further mentioned that because there were no local companies with capabilities of doing such works, they had since engaged foreign companies to do the work noting that they would be a lot of reconstruction in some areas of the pitch together with the track as they had been condemned and would need to be re-done. 

He pointed out that it was hoped that the companies would take over at the site by January 2024 while completion of the project was end of 2014. Ends