Incoming Byo council must probe all stalled projects: Nkomo

Aspiring Ward 5 Bulawayo councillor Octavius Dumisani Nkomo says the incoming councillors must conduct an audit on all stalled development projects and come up with an effective plan to ensure they are completed.  

Some stalled projects include the Egodini Mall project whose tender was awarded to Terracotta in 2016 for the redevelopment of the Basch Street Bus Terminus.

However, since then, the multi-million-dollar project has failed to take off leading to both residents and councillors demanding the termination of the deal.

Speaking during the Breakfast Club, Nkomo who has been active in the civil society for years said it will be important for the incoming council to investigate some of these projects.

“As somebody who is a student of project management, I have a keen interest in huge projects such as Egodini and indeed any other project, so it will be important for the new council once it comes in to have a look at projects that have stalled and why they stalled, was it because of project scope issues, risk issues, all of those issues which are part of project management,” he said.

“Was due diligence actually done in actually engaging some of the project managers and so forth.”

He said it will be very important to interrogate the council project management system.

“We can’t just blame the outgoing council but it’s a collective learning process to say why did those projects fail, did we do adequate PESTEL assessment in terms of political, economic, social environment, legal assessment, assessment of the viability of projects, how was the project management like, how was our contract management like,” said Nkomo.

“It will be very important for the incoming council to do an audit and an assessment of all those projects in order to be able to implement future projects more effectively.”

Meanwhile, Nkomo said the other duty of the incoming council is to come up with a detailed inventory of all the properties owned by the council and the state of those properties.

“The commercial potential of all those properties and then come up with some sort of system to either dispose of some of the properties, commercialise some of the properties and retain properties that are needed but definitely council needs to derive value, the commercial and monetary value from the properties that it has,” he said.

Nkomo said the local authority has various properties which are a great opportunity for the council to actually expand its revenue stream.

As an aspiring councillor, Nkomo said he has a clear vision of what needs to be done in terms of infrastructure development, how to improve service delivery and how to improve the revenue base of the council.

“If you vote for me, I have ideas on how we can expand the revenue base of the council, once we are able to do that, we will be able to deliver services, build Bulawayo, make Bulawayo the city that we want it to be,” said Nkomo.