A joint venture infrastructural exercise between Botswana and Zambia that would make a significant contribution to corridor linkages in sub-Saharan Africa has ground to a halt because of apparent non-payment to Daewoo Engineering and Construction.
The amount outstanding has been variously recorded as about 180 million Botswana pula or about $14 million.
That was more than two weeks ago after workers started downing tools because they had not received salaries for February, salaries Daewoo said it could not pay unless it received payment itself.
But the most recent reports coming out of Zambia, the country allegedly responsible for not honouring its end of the bargain with Botswana and Daewoo, relate an outstanding amount of about $18 million, well over 192 million pula.
In the most recent attempt to resolve the impasse, secretary for Zambia’s Housing and Infrastructure Ministry, Charles Mushota, said that 20 million kwacha had been paid to the Zambia National Road Fund for payment.
Daewoo, however, has seen no reflection of any such payment in its statements and workers on the project have officially gone on strike, despite Zambia’s efforts to convince labourers that it’s only a matter of time before they’re paid,.
In the meantime the bridge across the confluence of the Zambezi and Chobe rivers, south of Kazungula and north of Kasane, is metres away from completing a crossing that once relied on a ferry taking trucks and traffic back and forth between Botswana and Zambia.
