500 face job losses at Kanye Sanitation Project

The Kanye Sanitation Project faces a major setback: with the contractor unpaid, around 500 workers now face job losses and uncertainty.The contractor, Estate Construction, is allegedly always thrown from pillar to post whenever they submit their monthly tax invoice certificates.As a result, the contractor is forced to apply for a bank overdraft every month to pay employees and other bills."The contractor has had enough with the client. It is like some officials are doing everything in their power to see this project failing," a source close to this project said.He added that Estate Construction is contemplating retrenching 500 or more because they cannot continue to pay salaries with bank overdraft. It is said they usually need about P14 million to pay staff salaries and other bills.The contractor was recently told that the government was contemplating terminating the project because of a lack of funds. This was surprising because the project was long budgeted for, and it is 98 percent complete.Reached for comment, Estate Construction referred this publication to the Ministry of Water and Human Settlement.This project is no stranger to controversy. Engineers allegedly overlooked deep rock layers in the rocky village- omitting them entirely from the tender documents and sparking questions about technical due diligence.Kanye is surrounded by hills, and the rocks are all over the place. The Kanye Sanitation Project, which ended up in cost overruns of over P2,7 billion, is the talk of the town because the government engineers blundered big time.The variation is blamed on the negligence of government engineers. Another factor was the geotechnical assessment conducted by Africon Consultants, which at the pre-construction stage anticipated eight percent of the total excavation to be rock, against 30 percent of the sewage works that were anticipated.During excavation, it was later found that there was more rock than the anticipated eight percent. That rock allegedly shot for over 100 percent, hence the escalating cost overruns.Another factor that delayed on on-time completion of the project is access to the site. Most of the time, the contractor did not have access to the site. The other delay was caused by the residents who refused to accept the compensation, saying it was peanuts.During construction, it was also realised that Kanye and the surrounding areas did not have burrow material for backfilling. The contractor was forced to source burrow material from commercial sources in Lobatse and other areas. This also shot the original quantities in the bill. Excess overhaul also increased the bill.This is one of the contracts that was investigated for years by the security task team comprising the Directorate on Intelligence and Security (DIS), Botswana Police Service, Financial Intelligence Agency, Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime, and Botswana Unified Revenue Service for four years.During that period, the project came to a standstill until the DIS cleared the contractor.The Kanye Sanitation Project was awarded at P724.96 million initially to Unik Construction Engineering. It is a 480-kilometer pipeline, 11 pump stations, and a wastewater plant.The tender was initially awarded to the Chinese contractor Unik Construction in 2015, but Estate Construction took the matter to court. The Court of Appeal finally awarded the tender to Estate Construction in 2018.Director of Technical Services at the Ministry, Gaetshwane Matsiara, told this publication that they acknowledge the challenges faced by the project. He said the ministry is dedicated to completing the project.“We acknowledge that there have been some delays in the payment of claims by the contractor. But we all know the financial challenges that the country is facing.We are working around the clock to get the funds, and we have already submitted a formal request to the Ministry of Finance. We now have to prove why our request merits consideration”, Matsiarasaid.According to Matsiara, terminating the contract is currently not an option, as most of the components are complete.

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500 face job losses at Kanye Sanitation Project