City to discredit poor performing contractors

The City of Johannesburg will soon discredit poor performing contractors who are working on construction projects within the city.

This follows the recent oversight visit of the Executive Mayor, councillor Herman Mashaba to Braamfischerville.

According to councillor Nonhlanhla Makhuba MMC of Transport in the City of Joburg, they have witnessed some of the appalling work delivered by contractors appointed by the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) for the conversion of open stormwater channels to underground stormwater infrastructure.

“I am deeply disappointed by what we have seen and I must apologise to the community of Braamfischerville.

“It is unacceptable for contractors who are mandated with bringing needed development to our communities to deliver poor workmanship which completely disregards the needs of the community and deviates from their scope of work,” lamented MMC Makhuba.

She said JRA is leading the investigation and contractors found to have made poor workmanship will be discredited by the City of Joburg.

She added that discredited contractors will not have any future working relationships with the city.

MMC Makhuba is also concerned that in most cases, the actual work assigned to the main contractor is often passed to the sub-contractor.

The main contractor then enters into a working arrangement with the sub-contractor who does the actual project.

“In such situation, the main contractor will be discredited because it is the one which had an actual arrangement with the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA).

“We will be investigating all the contractors who are doing the job with the CoJ soon.

“We will also have a meeting with the contractors doing business with the CoJ and remind them that we will not tolerate shoddy workmanship,” said MMC Makhubu.

She cited that the CoJ would not accept any shoddy and incomplete work on multi-million rand projects which are aimed at bettering the lives of Joburg residents.

MMC Makhubu has assigned the management team of Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) to do a thorough investigation on this matter and take appropriate action against contractors and city officials who abdicated their duty.

“This particular incident has exposed our weakness in project and contract management.

“The fact that a project can go on for months without project managers detecting that work is not of the expected standards raises serious concerns.

“JRA will work on tightening our project and contract management for this area as well as other projects throughout the city. We can do better and will do better,” said MMC Makhubu.

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