By NKOLE CHITALA
THE National Council for Construction (NCC) says the dismissal of Road Development Agency (RDA) senior officials will have a negative impact on the over K4 trillion road infrastructure development for 2012.
NCC executive director Sylvester Mashamba said the move to dismiss the senior engineers will have an adverse effect on the way the 2012 annual work plan implementation will be done.
“As NCC, we are concerned about the dismissal of senior and experienced personnel at the Road Development Agency (RDA). Government has pumped in a lot of money in road infrastructure development for 2012 and the dismissal of these engineers has stripped the agency of its capacity. And this will definitely impact negatively on the way the 2012 annual work plan implementation will be done,” Dr Mashamba said.
Dr Mashamba said this at a media briefing in Lusaka yesterday.
Meanwhile, NCC has introduced new features on the registration certificates for contractors to effectively evaluate bids to facilitate preferential evaluation.
This follows the coming into force of the preferential procurement Statutory Instrument (SI) No.36 of 2011 under the Citizens Economic Empowerment Act No. 9 of 2006 whose intention is to empower Zambian firms and companies
The intention of the SI is to ensure that Zambian firms get a fair share in infrastructure development contracts and other sectors of the economy.
He said NCC has resolved to indicate on the certificate that it gives registered contractors the classification depending on the shareholding of the companies.
Dr Mashamba said so far, the council has adopted a classification model, which will have an effect when evaluating bids as the bid price will be adjusted to facilitate preferential evaluation.
Dr Mashamba, however, said that although the original intention is good, the final product has serious flaws that should be adressed immediately in order to benefit the targeted group.
NCC has registered 725 contractors as of January 25, 2012, out of which 64 are foreign.
Dr Mashamba said the registration process is an ongoing exercise which runs through the whole year, and that the council is confident that more contractors will be registered this year.
NCC has also warned organisations including government agencies and institutions to desist from asking contractors to register with their organisation.
“We would like to remind these organisations that NCC is legally mandated to register contractors involved in carrying out construction works in Zambia. This is to ensure fair treatment of contractors and protect the clients not to engage unregistered contractors who, when things go wrong, come running to NCC for solutions,” he said.