Harare City Council has become a feeding trough for unscrupulous contractors who are failing to deliver despite receiving huge sums of money as payment for implementing various projects, it has emerged.
Contracts that are in default are in roads construction, public lighting, supply of refuse compactors and biogas digestors, among other things.
However, council's lethargic response towards the defaulting contractors is puzzling. The local authority is yet to take action, legal or otherwise, against the defaulting contractors despite the detrimental effects that their actions have had on service delivery.
This situation has raised concern over the authenticity of some of the contractors and the operations of the local authority as a whole.
Ward 16 Councillor Deford Ngadziore recently raised concern over a company that was contracted to construct a biogas digester in 2018 and has done nothing after receiving full payment.
"Soon after the 2018 elections at my first council meeting, I came across a report for Synlark, a company owned by Moses Mpofu," he said.
"He was given full advance payment of €450 000 by the European Union in partnership with the City of Harare to construct a bio digester plant to address waste generated in Mbare. Nothing was done or recovered to date, although our audit committee did an investigation report.
"This year, Mpofu has been coming to Town House frequently in the company of Mike Chimombe, possibly to chase for other deals. This should be stopped."
Council spokesperson, Mr Stanely Gama said he could not divulge the contract's details as the matter went for arbitration.
He, however, did not deny that council lost thousands of euros in that deal.
"This issue happened in 2016 and after the dispute it eventually went for arbitration and we are now waiting for the outcome. We cannot give details at the moment because of that," he said.
In a recent interview, Mr Precious Shumba, Harare Residents Trust director spoke about city council's penchant to splurge large sums of money without following up on delivery.
He went on to confirm the biogas digester botched deal.
"The council is good at paying out huge amounts of money to contractors who do not deliver. For example, they paid a certain company to do a biogas digester in Mbare but the company never delivered. The Mbare biogas digester is now like a bush, abandoned, yet ratepayers paid for it.
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"The project was partly funded by the European Union and the City of Harare paid about US$200 000."
Mr Shumba claimed that there are several other contractors who were paid by the local authority and are yet to deliver anything.
"There is another company that was supposed to build a laboratory at Morton Jaffray Water Works. This company, which is owned by one prominent politician in the opposition, has been siphoning council funds claiming that they will build a laboratory there. Nothing has been done yet.
"When they wanted their initial payment, they went to the water works with five litres of paint and painted a small part," he said.
"The company then left some of its personnel working there and they were paid around US$37 500. To date nothing has been done on that project," said Mr Shumba.
He said the same contractor went on to push the City of Harare to make another payment for the same project that remains in limbo.
Mr Shumba said another company delivered wrong refuse compactors to council but nothing was done to recover the money.
"The City of Harare wanted double skip trucks and they ordered 15 of them and paid up. On delivery, the supplier brought single skip trucks. Someone in council's management received those vehicles and did not bother disclosing this fraud. They started using those trucks until some people discovered it," he said.
Contacted to comment on the outstanding projects, Mr Gama did not respond to our questions.
