KWEKWE City Council has deferred its plans to award its prepaid water meter tender to the winning bidder, after councillors said they wanted to scrutinise details of the deal before passing it.
BY BLESSED MHLANGA
The deal, which will see council purchase 200 prepaid water meters for a trial run project, was supposed to be passed during a full council meeting last Thursday, but councillors agreed to defer it to a special council meeting.
The councillors want to be furnished with an internal technical report and tender specification after irregularities were raised on the recommendation made by the procurement committee chaired by town clerk Emmanuel Musara.
According to minutes of the procurement committee meeting held on September 8, Tricon Investment had won the tender after submitting a quotation of $340 000 ahead of Synlak (Pvt) Limited, which had bid for $210 852 and Merchant Links which charged $231 707,97 for the same service.
Councillors led by Aaron Gwalazimba and Weston Masiya then raised a red flag, saying they wanted management to furnish them with tender documents, internal technical report on the meters before passing a council resolution.
Mayor Matenda Madzoke also noted that the price of $340 000, which was $130 000 more than the lowest bid was also above the informal tender threshhold of $300 000.
“We want to be sure that the things we are doing are correct and are in line with the laws. So we request that we be availed the information needed before we can make a resolution,” Madzoke said.
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If the pilot project runs successfully, council plans to buy a further 20 000 prepaid meters for the rest of the city.
Saddled by a $26 million debt, council believes that the prepaid meter programme would help reduced the arrears as residents would be forced to pay in advance for water usage.
Council specifically requested that the prepaid meters should have Intelligence to keep memory of currents debts and subtract a certain percentage from the debt every time a water voucher is purchased.
