Striking a Balance between Empowerment & Delivery”- MEC Maile

Striking a Balance between Empowerment & Delivery”- MEC Maile

This morning, the MEC for Human Settlements and Infrastructure Development, Lebogang Maile held stakeholder engagements with over 300 built environment Professional Service Providers (PSPs) and Contractors undertaking projects on behalf of the Infrastructure Development and Human Settlements portfolios.

“We have scheduled these critical engagements to strengthen our relationships with contractors and Professional Service Providers. We need to collaborate to identify areas of weakness and leverage our strengths. To achieve this, we as Government, need to ensure a conducive environment with strong coordination. We are building schools, clinics and housing developments together - so let us??build sound infrastructure.??We need to collaborate to ensure our infrastructure is delivered on time, within budget and scope and of the requisite scope. Let us harness local labour and where possible buy local - this will build our economy ensuring that we thrive together”, said MEC Maile.

MEC Maile urged stakeholders to, “Strike a balance between empowerment and delivery. We cannot have a situation where we are just talking about empowerment but there is no delivery!” MEC Maile maintained that a radical approach is required to end the non-performance of contractors and professional service providers.

Stakeholders were afforded the opportunity to weigh in on some challenges experienced during project delivery. Critical focal areas included the delay in awarding projects which led to outdated or inadequate project scoping which contributed to budget overruns, insufficiently experienced contractors and PSPs and delays in payment due to time lags from sister Departments. Stakeholders called for heightened security on site to offset criminal activities contributing to project stoppages and the reduction of red tape which resulted in setbacks in attaining Occupational Certificates.?

MEC Maile highlighted the abuse of project cost variations, “It's not possible that every project has a variation - and that variation is the maximum allowed contractually, which is??20% of the contract value. This means there is a problem.??We cannot allow this abuse to continue. Legally and in principle, there is nothing wrong with variations - as long as this facility is not abused and is utilised for the intended purpose”.