4 September 2008
editorial
Over the past two days, this newspaper carried reports to the effect that Parliamentary Village, where our legislators lodge and the National Assembly are falling apart.
As if that were not enough, now we hear that even the State House is in a serious state of disrepair. We should be concerned when the residences of parliamentarians could be rendered unusable.
This has the potential to disrupt important national business. Parliamentarians are expected to fashion out laws that will enable, facilitate and protect and we cannot imagine this critical business being held hostage by architectural defects or badly maintained houses when we pay for such services.
What is even more worrying is that former president Festus Mogae vacated the State House late last year to allow for renovations and repairs to be done before the incumbent president could move in.
Almost nine months later, we understand that these repairs have not been done. What has been happening all this time?
If this high level of ineptitude could reach these high places, what will happen at the lower levels?
Both Parliament and the Parliamentary Village are modern buildings and they should still be in a good state unless they have not been maintained over the years. We want to believe that over the years, the relevant maintenance units have been carrying out routine maintenance. It would appear that routine maintenance has either not been carried out, or there has been no regular inspection.
In so many instances, there have been serious skepticism about the efficiency of our procuring divisions and the oversight institution that does the inspection and ensures that there is strict adherence to proper building standards.
There are instances where one feels that experts at these institutions are horribly negligent or they are incompetent about what they are supposed to be doing.
A lot of buildings elsewhere in the country, particularly in the remote areas, have been left in the same state with no one showing any concern that they are properly kept.
There are many cases where relatively new buildings have fallen apart despite the millions of taxpayer's money spent on them.
This should be an eye opener that something very drastic needs to be done about the department of buildings, electrical, architecture and indeed about the whole process of procuring service. There is a lot of waste here and unless we attend to it, we will bury billions of Pula in badly constructed and badly maintained buildings.
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