The Sunday News
Vusumuzi Dube, Senior Municipal Reporter
THE Bulawayo City Council is yet to approve detailed building plans of the Egodini Bus Terminus with councillors ordering management to engage the contractors, Terracotta Private Limited to ensure the project gets back on track.
This came out during a special council meeting that was held last Wednesday where councillors were getting a progress report on the Egodini Project amid growing concern over the failure by the South Africa-based contractor to meet set deadlines.
According to the report, it was revealed that the contractor had just forwarded a detailed building plan for Phase One of the project in March.
“The Egodini plans were approved in principle in the inception of the project and the detailed plans for Phase One were submitted in March 2020 and they were assessed by a technical team and comments sent to the architect. The developer is required to submit a detailed programme of works, including civil works. The detailed design packages are yet to be submitted by the developer’s consultant for checking by the engineering services department,” reads the report.
Terracotta has further written to the local authority requesting that the deadline for the completion of Phase One of the project be pushed to November this year. This will be the second time the contractor has requested an extension. Initially Phase One of the multi-million-dollar project was meant to be completed in November last year before Terracotta requested that the deadline be extended to March this year.
“The developer has cited the hyper-inflationary environment and the Covid-19 national lockdown as unforeseeable exceptional events or circumstances as a cause of delay. This justifies the extension of time for completion. The exceptional events which are beyond the developer’s control appear to have prevented the developer from performing his substantial obligations under the contract and hence the application for an extension of time to 30 November 2020,” reads the report.
According to the report Phase 1A of the project is expected to be complete by September, whole Phase 1B has been set for November. Phase 1A, according to the contractor, includes the construction of 1 100 informal traders’ stalls, a 100-bay taxi rank, security wall, security tower, motor retail, taxi associations offices, public ablutions and a service lane.
Phase 1B includes the construction of the bus terminus building, fast food shops and the grocery anchor. The project which experienced a number of false starts since Terracotta won the tender in September 2012, is expected to gobble close to $60 million, with the company also awarded with a 99-year lease to the terminus.
