President Hifikepunye Pohamba has denounced the shoddy workmanship on some of the houses built under the ambitious mass housing project.
Government has set aside billions of dollars to ensure 185 000 houses are built for the masses.
All patriotic citizens should applaud the Head of State for having spoken out publicly against the growing trend of accumulating government funds in return for sloppy work.
Pohamba’s denunciations of the poor artisanship characterising numerous public works funded by Namibian taxpayers should draw positive response from those entrusted with public work.
We should act now and not wait until we have a calamity in the form of a building collapse resulting in the loss of lives.
They get paid before they lay a single brick. President Pohamba once said these types of contractors seem more concerned about purchasing sport cars than delivering products for the future.
But inspectors of government projects are often equally guilty of sleeping on duty. Shoddy work is often completed under the watchful eye of these very officials.
Inspectors should ensure an 100 percent compliance and where shoddy workmanship is detected it should be rectified at the expense of the person given such a tender.
We are saying this because we have seen incidents where taxpayers end up paying to sort out the mess created by the poor workmanship of fly-by-night contractors who, by hook or crook, use poor quality material to maximise profit – and with impunity.
Tender specifications should strictly be adhered to and there should be no exceptions – as all of us as taxpayers deserve better and nothing less.
This cancer of poor workmanship should be nipped in the bud. If one were to undertake a random survey it would be easy to find cracks on bridge girders, while recently built houses have cracks and fissures in the walls, ceilings and some floors all attributed to inept workmanship by builders.
Paint falls off some walls because some builders did not comply with the tender requirements to which they are legally bound.
This malady in the construction industry even gets worse in rural areas where inspections by people paid to do this work seem less stringent.
Inasmuch as we support Pohamba’s bold pronouncements it is high time we move beyond the rhetoric and put to account those not complying with stipulated tender requirements.
It is a generally accepted norm of good governance that effective legal remedies should also be available to mitigate breach of a legal duty by all people tendering for specific public works such as houses, roads, rails, culverts and sewerage and water reticulation projects.
The strict enforcement of inspections at variant phases of construction will among others strictly ensure accountability and integrity of all public projects and its procurement regime.
Once a contractor clinches a tender officials should ensure there is a binding contract embedded with penalties – such as withholding a certain percentage of the money, to be paid only once such infraction has been corrected.
These penalties should not be a slap on the wrist but should be so prohibitive no contractor dares take shortcuts because at the back of their minds will be consequences they could face.
Those supposed to enforce these laws regulating the construction industry should take a cue from Pohamba but, once again, the time to act is now.