16 Jun 2014

The principal roads engineer in the Ministry of Transport and Communications, Mr Kenny Mmopa has said backlog of roads maintenance nationally accounts to over P1 billion.

He said at a recent one-day workshop in Francistown that during the 2014/15 financial year, his ministry was allocated a budget of P382 million for maintenance of roads, an amount way too low to cover all the maintenance works needed around the country.

He said most of the roads developed potholes immediately after they were completed and handed over for use. He stated that the country had been forced to source more funds to do maintenance work, and as a way of cost saving, they adopted OPRC, which came with long term contractors and conditions to meet service levels so that such situations of substandard works could be prevented.

Mr Mmopa further highlighted that they recently had a bench marching tour in Australia and New Zealand as key countries on OPRC. He said payments to be made to the contracted entity were based on measured output reflecting the target condition of the roads under contract through service levels.

Mr Mmopa said they realised that there was need to introspect on how they had been doing things locally to address roads issues.

Furthermore, he said most contractors did not have trust amongst themselves as many are not honouring their obligations hence they are not willing to form consortiums so that they can share the works in awarded projects.

He noted that they end up being overpowered by the projects, resulting in poor performances and abandoning the projects, which then have serious cash flow problems that impedes on their performance. 

Mr Mmopa stated that they are running a pilot project contracted on OPRC for Kanye, Ramaphate and Jwaneng road and it will be upon the completion and assessment of the project that they will consider rolling out the concept to other areas.

He explained that with the OPRC concept, the contractor payments are based on the quantity of works completed and certified and deductions for penalties are made for failure to comply with the terms of the contract, with respect to the service levels of the project outlined in the contract.

OPRC contracts, he said, are for long term periods going as far as 10 years with the contractor being tasked to do the maintenance of the road throughout the contract. ENDS