Ndian projects advancing at a snail’s pace

The Vice chair of the follow up committee, Reverend Father Mugagga has assured members of the committee that all projects earmark for the Division must be finished at 100 percent, and that no individual should standin the way the long arm of the law is awaiting defaulters.

Father Mugagga made the statement during the second participatory follow up committee meeting of the Public Investment Budget that took place in Mundemba recently.

He opined that the 2013 low rate of execution was attributed to the late launching of the financial year, late arrival of project lock book and the non mastery of the new financial regime programmed budgeting. The Vice Chair appealed to the administration to intervene in order to curb the problem of lowest bidders as earlier stated by the MINEPAT Delegate.

The Reverend said that some gamblers who lack mastery of the terrain exploit the situation of lowest bidder to get contracts which are never executed, and even when realized, it is of poor quality because the bid tend to be insufficient to guarantee a good job. He however warned that severe sanctions will be meted out on any contractor who dares to abandoned contracts from now onward.

Earlier on, the Divisional Delegate of Economy, Planning and Regional Development, MINEPAT for Ndian, Chief Fosop Asaah Dominic, said that the issue of lowest bidder in contracts should completely be wiped out in the Division, since lowest bidders in most cases fail to execute their contracts.

Chief Fosop disclosed that more than FCFA 1 Billion received by the Division for 2014 PIB, was later increased by FCFA 800 million under the Ministry of Planning priority investment program. This he said stands as the Division’s share of the National cake.

Presenting the execution statistics, the Delegate noted that Ndian Division benefited from 123 projects for 2014 and out of this number, only 30 have been executed at 100%, while just 2 were ongoing, with up to 61 still at the level of zero percent.

Only 30 projects have been awarded by the Tenders Board for the year. The physical execution rate stands at 28.6%, while the financial execution stands at 9%, a rate which the entire participants considered as below average. At the end of the meeting, some measures were taken to hasten the rate of contract awards and the projects execution.

The first Assistant SDO for Ndian who chaired the meeting expressed disappointment to all the Divisional Delegates who were absent from the meeting, especially as they had to give account of the projects allocated to their services.

He also observed that out of the 9 Mayors in the Division, only 2 were present, in spite of the fact that, their councils benefited from most of the projects. He urged the MINEPAT Delegate to furnish his office with names of defaulting contractors for severe disciplinary measures to be meted out to them.