CHINHOYI — Three Chinhoyi municipality tender board committee members — including chairperson Councillor Brighton Mhizha — have been booted out for attempting to block the retendering of the $2,9 million urgent sewer system overhaul project.
The trio last month voted against the re-flighting of the tender which council’s technical consultants, Brian Colquhoun Hugh O’Donnel & Partners, had recommended its awarding to Destiny Ventures and Johnsons Designs and Installations (JDI) for civil/mechanical and electrical works respectively.
According to minutes of the tender board meeting held on November 16 — despite not being a member of the committee — deputy Mayor Willie Nyambi chaired the meeting in the absence of Mhizha who told NewsDay he was never informed of the meeting.
Two other members, councillor Tendai Musonza (vice-chairperson) and Zanu PF’s special interest councillor Richard Chafausipo, were also left in the dark.
“I was not told of the meeting in spite of the fact I am the chairperson who should be the one calling for it. There is something fishy,” Mhizha said.
Councillor Divies Zinduru, who also does not sit in the seven-member board, was co-opted into the team that met bidders a fortnight ago before going on a visit of the project’s sites.
Divisions among MDC-T councillors have deepened, amid reports some were demanding disciplinary action against Musonza for allegedly leaking confidential information exposing the rot surrounding the tender, to media.
The councillors suspect Musonza was bent on destroying MDC-T from within.
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Musonza defected from Zanu PF before joining MDC-T after winning the 2008 elections on a Zanu PF ticket. Mayor Claudius Nyamhondoro confirmed Musonza’s impending censure.
“There are rumours to the effect he would be brought before a party disciplinary hearing, but at council level there is nothing we can do to him,” said Nyamhondoro, before the latest boardroom coup.
Musonza is also MDC-T Chinhoyi district secretary. A clique of councillors was allegedly promised $5 000 each if a named company won the tender.
The company had not submitted tender papers in the first bidding round and re-flighting was meant to allow it a chance to clinch the lucrative deal, sources said.
Council re-flighted the tender after citing incompetence on the part of Destiny Ventures and another shortlisted bidder JDI which were in 2010 contracted to carry out rehabilitation work of Chinhoyi’s water reticulation system.
