Governance not about funding friends that funded you during campaigns – Sichinga
By Fanny Kalonda
FORMER commerce minister Bob Sichinga says there is need to examine the Ndola-Lusaka dual carriageway deal in detail as it will be a problem for the next government.
He said governance is not about favouring friends.
“This is for government to show us the figures. Show us the figures because there are many of us, there are many accountants in the country, there are many road engineers in this country, we can work out. This is not rocket science. The question that is arising is the government has not justified this kind of expenditure,” Sichinga said. “Why do you want to make it 25 years? It is going to create problems for the next government. Whether this government serves five years or 10 years, the case might be, this will still be problem because this will be existing. It will be 25 years. Just like now the current government has found challenges because of the agreements that were made in the past. This will still be a problem for them. So what I am saying is that if we restructure this funding, it is quite possible that coupling what the institution is earning plus what is being obtained from the others, it could be covered. They may even proceed despite what we are saying. They may proceed but this is going to get people into trouble, I can tell you this. Because government does not operate like that, government is about laws and regulations. That’s what it’s about. It’s not about favouring friends. It’s not about funding friends that funded you during campaigns. It’s not about that. Government is about making sure that you are as frugal as possible. We should not be wasteful.”
He said the contract needs to be examined stressing that “don’t go into a deal blindfolded”.
“It says, they want to recover this amount in 25 years. Number two, what is the profit, do you know it? Now if you are going to do a deal, you are running Macro Ocean, is the friend of the President, therefore, he has been favoured…don’t go into a deal blindfolded. You need to know. Others have said ‘Mr such and such’… We need to examine this in detail, we have been on that road before,” Sichinga said when he featured on KBN TV. “You cannot turnaround after these years and say RDA (Road Development Agency) does not have capacity. You cannot tell me that the National Road Fund Agency does not have capacity, you cannot tell me that. There are other expensive items that are more expensive that this road that have been handled by government agencies that have been set up. Most of the parastatals are set up as special purpose vehicles to deal with this. So that cannot be used as an argument. This is what has led to the cases that you are seeing at ACC, okay.”
He argued that Zambian institutions can do the Lusaka-Ndola road works.
He said many roads have been constructed “in this country, pipelines have been build, rail lines have been built, it is a matter of getting these institutions to do their work”. “You already have institutions in place that can undertake this work. We have lived to see what has happened in the previous regime and also the issue of how these contracts are being given out. And the question is that if government comes out, and says to us, there is not enough money, one would expect that the government would be looking at very frugal ways which to save costs,” Sichinga said. “You can’t afford to have many players having their hand into this deal because all it will do, it will send money away from the construction to others. These failures in the past and several other cases we can quote have caused people to start questioning.”
Sichinga said people are expectant that the road that is going to be constructed would not suffer the same shortfalls as in the past.
“And if we finance this from the resources of road fund, it would take barely seven to 10 years. Why are you taking 25 years for somebody to eat? So I think drawing from the challenges that we have had in the past, and some of which are in courts right now, I think people are saying wait a minute let’s be wary about this. Let’s examine what our government is doing,” Sichinga said. “The expectation at the moment is that the road that is going to be constructed will not suffer the same shortfalls and failures that we have seen happening at the moment. This Macro Ocean Investment Consortium, I am not aware of any special construction technologies they have that they are going to bring to the table because it has not been indicated. How much is it going to cost, what is the cost that Macro Ocean Investment Consortium is going to charge for this?”
Sichinga said there is need to explain the role of Macro Ocean Investment in the deal.
“However, because we have got NAPSA, Workers Compensation which are parastatals, you could say it is the public portion and we have got the private side which would be Stanbic and of course it is a partnership when you do that. If we are not dissecting the problem to a great detail, then you can call it a PPP. The funding is being providing by public institutions, publicly owned institutions, otherwise government owned institutions and I think we need to take account of the fact that the World Bank, the IMF, are in negotiation with our government and that you don’t want to tie down government financing and therefore government should not commit anymore financing,” said Sichinga. “Secondly, it is the fact that you don’t want to borrow in foreign currency because that means that you have to service it in foreign currency. Yes it is in some way a PPP, not in the way it is defined in the law. But let’s call it that…Drawing from what the government itself has said, you are talking about [US $] 577 [million]. The question I think that arises is that, what is governments’ role? Number 2, government has indicated that there will be a company called Macro Ocean Investment Consortium, what is the role of this institution? Why is this thing a 25-year lease if you want to call it that? If funding is going to be provided by public institutions, why don’t they just manage it themselves? That is what is being raised.”