Africa-Press – Botswana. Following extensive consultations with relevant stakeholders, government has taken a decision to review the Development Manager (DM) model as an infrastructure delivery concept as well as projects under the model and the resultant implementation.
Minister of Transport and Infrastructure, Mr Noah Salakae said in this regard, 70 projects would be suspended while 78 would not be suspended due to possible far reaching legal and financial implications associated with demobilisation.
“Nevertheless, these 78 projects will not be spared from the review process,” said Mr Salakae. Furthermore, he said government would appoint a special task force team to undertake the review scheduled to last for a period of 40 days and findings and recommendations of which should be delivered to the ministry for action.
Mr Salakae said the terms and reference of the said task team had been drawn and included among other things the manner in which the DM model was set up, its legal structure and rationale, mandate of the DMs and their compliance with relevant laws.
Notwithstanding the decision, he said DM model projects were necessary to support Botswana and improve people’s lives.
“In that regard, the government is alive to the fact that these projects have to be done as a matter of necessity. What might currently be an issue, however, is the model of their execution or rather, since we need these projects, what is the best model to use in delivering them to Batswana,” he said.
Earlier when giving background, Mr Salakae said the DM model would service 148 projects at a cost of P13.2 billion and the projects would be carried out as part of the second Transitional National Development Plan which was scheduled to run from April 2023 to March 2025.
He said the evaluation process was undertaken by selected four ministries and resulted in the pre-qualification of nine development managers, of which they were issued with invitation to tender.
The minister said the DMs were awarded a package of individual projects in July 2023, contracts signed in October 2023.
He said at the time of contract signing, the value of the DM packages ranged from approximately P1.1 to P1.9 billion for each DM, adding that the said entities were to spend about P13 billion over the 48 projects.
However, he said as per project memoranda, it was important to indicate that the total estimated cost for DM projects was approximately P27 billion.
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