The Harare City Council (HCC) of Zimbabwe recently cancelled three projects that it had partnered with The Facts, a Gaborone-based company.
HCC cited delays in the implementation of the projects.
The Facts had agreed to invest in waste management, to develop a tourism resort outside Harare and to build infrastructural capacity at Harare Quarry, the dumping site for waste in Harare.
The Botswana company’s chief executive officer, S. Motalaote, is reported to have earlier written to Harare City Council advising that his company had mobilised the US$6, 7 million for the waste management project but the councillors in Harare had already taken the decision to terminate the contract with The Facts.
The money was going to be used to buy and instal plant and equipment for the waste management project in Harare.
The Botswana company is the second foreign corporation that the Harare City Council has had to terminate deals with in recent months.
Only a few months ago, a South African company, EasiPark, had its contract with the council terminated after the two parties failed to agree on some fundamentals of the deal.
Easipark had been contracted to manage the vehicle parking in the Central Business District of Harare.
Harare councillors took a dim view of the deal after realising that the South Africans “were insincere and had failed to remit funds to the Harare City Council as earlier agreed to”.
Minutes of a recent council meeting indicate that the councillors resolved to terminate the deal because of “irreconcilable differences” between the two parties who were supposed to operate jointly.
Members of the Zanu-PF Youth League, assisted by their relevant ministry, had cried foul over the parking deal and had demonstrated in the city to kick the South Africans out when the deal became public early last year.
