By Kudumo Bernhold
NKURENKURU, July 6 – The National African Student’s Association held a meeting on 4 July to discuss the abandonment of the Nkurenkuru Vocational Training Centre.
NASA expressed dissatisfaction with the leadership, administration, and management of all pertinent offices that were involved in the construction and planning of the training centre, which was envisioned to start in 2020 and be finished by September 2022.
According to NASA, the project is still incomplete three months before the scheduled date of completion. The construction site has been since abandoned and turned into a ghost building.
Matjayi Domingu, an executive member of NASA said the situation was referred to the offices higher education ministry, NTA, the governor of the Kavango West region, and the contractor (Neu Olulya Trading CC).
He further said the Central Procurement Board of Namibia (CPBN) awarded a N$35 million tender to the constructor, Neu Olulya Trading CC in 2020 to construct phase 1B of Centre which stipulated that it should be completed by the end of September 2022.
However, the contractor allegedly failed to deliver on contractual milestones and NTA terminated the contract.
Neu Olulya Trading CC’s challenged the cancellation of the contract in court but lost the case when the court upheld NTA’s decision to terminate the contract on 17 March 2022.
Domingu said the association blamed the contractor’s delay in completing the VTC on the NTA as this is what happens when contracts are awarded on alliances rather than merit.
NASA said they are disappointed with NTA and CPBN for delaying to awarding the tender to a new contractor yet the legal battle with the old contractor ended in March of 2022.
NASA further said the site has no security personnel and thousands of dollars worth of building materials had been stolen and damaged.
The training centre is the biggest development that the region can achieve as it is essential to give Namibian youth knowledge and skills.
NASA demanded that NTA immediately appoints a new contractor to start the construction of the training centre by the end of July.
They also demanded that security personnel be deployed at the construction site to safeguard the abandoned building materials.
