BULAWAYO City Council (BCC) has cancelled a waste management deal with Pragma Leaf Waste to Energy Progress after the project clocked four years without implementation.
The contract was signed on November 30, 2018, but to date nothing has been done.
Latest council minutes state: “The major highlights of the contract were that the contractor was to design, construct and operate a sorting facility, design, construct and operate a processing facility that turns municipal solid waste to energy using various technologies, design, construct and operate a power plant of sufficient capacity to provide electricity and to assist the client with refuse removal vehicles to ensure efficient refuse removal.”
The contract also stipulated that the contractor must mobilise resources to commence the contract within 120 days of signing it, but the company kept coming up with various excuses, which included the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The major players in this company are based in the United Kingdom,” the council minutes read.
Council held a virtual meeting with the contractor on March 22, 2022 to discuss progress since the project had already missed its timelines.
“At this meeting the contractor promised to provide a detailed programme. After this meeting a follow up was made through an e-mail by the project manager and they finally responded on April 7, 2022 providing the programme in the form of a Gnatt chart. Unfortunately according to the Gnatt chart, the first step was to submit building plans, approval of plans, and build a material recovery facility with the final commissioning of the facility in December 2022,” the council’s latest minutes read.
“It was noted that from the time of signing of the contract and the envisaged commissioning of the MRF, it would have taken four years to commence instead of 120 days.”
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Indications are that building plans for the materials recovery facility were finally submitted on April 22. However, the plans have not yet been approved as departments raised some issues to be rectified.
Council says the company’s draughtsperson collected plans for the corrections, but never brought them back for approval. A committee suggested cancellation of the contract seeing that there was no meaningful progress.
“There was a possibility of the issue going for litigation which may inconvenience council as legal matters taken to court tend to drag for a long time. It meant council might not engage another company before the matter was resolved by the courts.
“Following this legal advice we continued engaging Pragma Leaf until they submitted the building plans which they do not seem to have the zeal to finalise or to commence the project. Furthermore, the scope of the project seems to have scaled down to a material recovery facility only for now and this will not have any impact on the current solid waste management challenges which the city is facing,” council added.
The minutes said council was concerned that the project was not taking off the ground when the city was struggling to manage its solid waste.
“It was, therefore, recommended that the contract be terminated.”
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