Dishonest contractors leave jobs unfinished

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Dishonest contractors leave jobs unfinished

9:00 CAT | 28 Nov 2017

Voa (File photo) / Inhambane governor Daniel Chapo

Dishonest contractors, who take money from the government but then abandon jobs before they are finished, have cost the southern Mozambican province of Inhambane more than 30 million meticais (almost 500,000 US dollars), according to provincial governor Daniel Chapo, cited in Tuesday’s issue of the Maputo daily “Noticias”.

Speaking at a meeting of the Provincial Council on Monday, Chapo said he wanted the institutions of justice to punish the offenders and recover the money.

Among the jobs which contractors have simply abandoned are 27 classrooms, six school administrative blocks, nine water sources, and four health units in several of the province’s localities and administrative posts. In each of these cases, the contractors took the government’s money, started the jobs and then disappeared.

Some of these cases go back several years. Thus in Zavala district a contractor named IVF Constructions absconded in December 2010 after receiving money to build a meteorological station in the town of Quissico. The case has been handled to the Provincial Attorney’s office, so far without result.

In the town of Maxixe, the company Parceiros Constructions and Services was paid in October 2015 to build a wall which should have been completed by February 2016. The job was never finished and the current whereabouts of the company are unknown.

Similarly, EGS Constructions was hire to build a wall around a government installation in Inhambane city in October 2013. It was a simple job that should have been finished in two months. It has never been completed and nobody knows where the company is.

Chapo wants an end to this type of fraud. He said that the Public Prosecutor’s Office, in its capacity as lawyer for the state, should chase down all these fugitive companies and oblige them to return the money they took.

Furthermore, all companies that abandoned jobs should be barred from bidding in any future tenders for building work in Inhambane.

Source: AIM