Jacob Mamabolo, MEC for Infrastructure Development (DID) in Gauteng, led an unannounced site visit at Randfontein High School in the West Rand where the department is doing renovations and refurbishments to the value of R34million.

Mamabolo was following up on complaints, lodged by the Principal of the school, over the project. According to the department, work was lagging behind schedule for a year and had caused massive inconvenience and expense to the school. The school incurred expense as it tried to mitigate the effects of the non-performance of the contractor appointed to execute the project.

The MEC announced that the Randfontein project manager will be moved from the site for failing to timeously flag what he called the inexcusable performance by the contractor. A new contractor and DID project manager would be appointed immediately to take over the project.

“Over the past 18 months we have put in place a raft of extreme measures at DID to track, monitor and deal with exactly this kind of non-performance,” Mamabolo said.

Fostering transparency, performance, and compliance

He was referring to the Project Readiness Matrix (PRM) which he announced last week as a proprietary tool developed by the Department to enable it to rigorously track the more than 160 steps required for the successful completion of all infrastructure projects undertaken by the Department.

“The PRM is a tool of transparency, accountability, performance, and compliance. I am pleased that this tool will help us ensure that every of our projects is delivered on time.”

Mamabolo emphasised: “As government, we must be accountable and we must not be used as an outlet for poor performance poor quality, corruption, and waste. We must ensure that every cent entrusted to us is spent in the most responsible, ethical and accountable manner.

“Now that we have the new DID and its delivery capabilities, we will be on the ground over the remaining 18 months and driving performance and rooting out the culture poor performance. This we will do without fear or favour, we will not blink on this matter”, said Mamabolo.

The Randfontein High School visit is the first in a series of unannounced site visits to crack down on poor performance.