Egodini Mall construction further delayed

BULAWAYO residents have to wait a little longer before they step foot at the long-awaited Egodini Mall after a South African civil engineering company that won a tender to construct the mall missed its latest deadline.

In January during a media tour attended by city council and local governmenot officials, Terracotta Trading Limited director Thulani Moyo said they will open a taxi rank and vending bays at the beginning of April.

Moyo blamed Covid-19 lockdowns for disrupting civil engineering works, amid mounting pressure on the Bulawayo City Council (BCC) to cancel the contract and re-tender the project.

Black empowerment lobby Affirmative Action Group (AAG) at one time also threatened to sue the BCC to force the local authority to cancel the contract.

Terracotta was awarded the US$60 million tender in 2016 and was charged with the refurbishment of the Basch Street terminus, popularly known as Egodini, into a mall and regional transport hub.

Since then, it has been a tale of missed deadlines - November 2019, March 2020 and August 2021.

Analysts said the local authority was left with no option but to cancel the tender.

"Seeing that a number of years have passed since the project was supposed to be completed and nothing has happened, the only option is to have it re-tendered. There have to be specific timelines and due process must be followed to prevent the disappointment that people have witnessed," Bulawayo-based analyst Dumisani Nkomo said.

Once complete, the mall will be Bulawayo's first major infrastructural project in more than two decades, with the Bulawayo Centre shopping mall having been the last after its construction in 2007. But the Bulawayo Centre shopping mall project remains incomplete to date.

The third and final phase of Bulawayo Centre, with an estimated cost of US$4 million, which was scheduled to start in 2016 entailed turning the ground and mezzanine of a building next to Princess Court into a mall, named Buyani Mall.

Michael Ndiweni, the coordinator of the Bulawayo Vendors and Traders Association (BVTA), said the continued closure of Egodini disrupted livelihoods, with informal traders who used to operate at the taxi rank the worst affected.

"The closure has led to the chaos that we see in the central business district with licenced and unlicenced vendors now operating from street pavements. As far as we are concerned, the council should identify alternative spaces to operate from to stop the chaos that we are witnessing now," Ndiweni said.

During the media tour, Bulawayo town clerk Christopher Dube admitted that council was under pressure from its stakeholders including vendors, residents and the government as he appealed to Terracotta to stick to its timelines.

Calls to cancel the Terracotta deal comes at a time when there is a groundswell of discontent over a latest US$2million tender awarded to Tendy Three Investment (TTI) a US$2 million tender for vehicle parking management.

Under the deal, which is a build, operate and transfer (BOT), BCC will receive 30% of the proceeds, while TTI retains 70%.

In total, over a period of six years, TTI stands to make a potential net profit of US$4 420 080, in comparison to US$941 760 for BCC.

The BCC has lost several thousands of dollars to briefcase companies from outside the city that would have won various tenders for different projects but failed to provide the services.

The BCC lost more than $300 000 to a briefcase Harare company in an ambulance procurement deal in 2010 after paying for the supply of six ambulances. The company disappeared without trace.

Council also lost thousands of dollars in a dodgy deal with a South African company that failed to supply a cremation machine.