Botswana Government is losing a lot of money to contractors who inflate prices and then fail to complete projects within budget.
Construction in Botswana is probably among the most expensive in the world not so much because of input costs, which we concede are also high, but because contractors have identified Government, by far the biggest consumer, as a cash cow with deep pockets that are able to shoulder all amounts of dubious prices.
Bad as it is, this would be pardonable were it that in return government gets good quality for the money paid.
But alas, that is not the case.
Shoddy work is the order of the day.
There used to be a time when, as a client, Government favoured Chinese contractors over other contractors because the Chinese were not only cheaper but also delivered projects on time and within budget.
That is no longer the case.
As a collective, Chinese contractors are now behind some of the worst delays that Botswana Government has ever had to put up with.
Realising the loopholes, Chinese contractors are also now some of the worst culprits when it comes to overcharging the government.
They have also perfected the art of cutting corners so as to accommodate cost overruns, not to mention deliberately leaving out crucial steps as has been proved in the construction of a Senior Secondary School in Shakawe.
It is worth mentioning that some of the crimes that these Chinese contractors get away with in Botswana are punishable by death in the Peoples Republic of China.
Creditably, the minister responsible for infrastructure, Johnnie Swartz, has awoken to the fact that Chinese infallibility in construction is a myth.
He has promised to take action.
We wholly support him.
It is our hope that he will get the assistance from his cabinet colleagues, including from the State President.
Some of the Chinese companies think they are untouchable because upon establishing in Botswana they immediately wrought a network of contacts among people perceived to be President Ian Khama’s inner circle.
They did this, we used to think, so that they could get unfair advantage over competitors in bidding, but also, it is now apparent, so that they could continue to make undeserved millions by ripping off the state by way of circumventing the known processes, standards and ethics before turning around to flaunt their connections as protection after a failure to implement agreed standards.
While they like to call themselves the private sector, it is a fact of life that many of these companies owe their allegiance to the Government of China, which, in the first instance, dispatched them into the diaspora. As such we call on the Chinese Embassy in Botswana to engage with their countrymen to ascertain if their ethics are the same ones that are demanded back home in the People’s Republic of China.
Just how does Botswana escape from the jinx of this mafia-like spider web that is operated by powerful locals in cahoots with international syndicates?
Our advice is that Government needs to outsource some of the supervisory and project management aspects of its large scale projects.
The Department of Building and Engineering Services is so manifestly not up to the task when it comes to handling the crooks that so powerfully dominate the construction sector.
There are private companies that are today able to handle big projects, well in time, and within costs.
Take BIFM for instance. The company is involved in large scale construction projects but invariably, such projects are almost always completed on time, within budget and, most crucially, to the original specifications.
Government needs to engage the same people that are engaged by such big companies like BIFM so that they could become government representatives in supervising the thugs that control the construction industry today.
That would not only save Government money, it also would guarantee quality and value for money.
