Zimpapers Logo

Oliver Kazunga Senior Business Reporter
THE Zimbabwe Building Contractors Association (ZBCA) has urged the government and the private sector to award construction tenders to indigenous companies.ZBCA president Obert Sibanda said players both government and the private sector should support locally registered contractors who showed professionalism in their operations.

Speaking at the launch of their magazine, the Zimbabwe Construction News in Harare recently, he said local contractors were subjected to unfair tendering procedures for government work by foreign contractors and taxation issues by the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority during the tendering process.

He said it was imperative for the government and other authorities to give immediate attention to a number of challenges the construction sector was facing.

“There is a misconception that indigenous building contractors don’t provide good service but we’re saying ‘good service comes with good support’ therefore we urge the government and the private sector to help us grow together,” he said.

The magazine was part of ZBCA’s communication and outreach tools to market Zimbabwe’s construction sector as well as being in touch with its members and downstream industries.

Sibanda said there was a need for the industry to pull in one direction and help the country grow as the construction sector was an epitome of the country’s economic development as it was the “first to suffer and the last to recover when things go bad”.

In this light, Sibanda said it was important for the construction sector to be more vocal as it was one of the few sectors that cut across all the four pillars of the Zimbabwe Agenda for Socio Economic Transformation (Zim-Asset).

“The construction industry is responsible for infrastructural development as we develop roads, buildings and other infrastructure. But we’re also into food and nutrition, because we develop dams, farms and support infrastructure used to produce food for the people.

“We support value-addition and beneficiation, because we’re the ones who construct factories and buildings where processing of minerals takes place. In terms of social services and poverty eradication we’re the ones who build schools, hospitals and other social amenities, so in terms of Zim-Asset we’re supposed to be the leading sector,” he said.

ZBCA senior vice-president Engineer Ramson Nherera and the Zimbabwe Institute of Quantity Surveyors president Gideon Mukorombindo reiterated the need for all stakeholders to consider their members in tendering processes.

The association has also launched the Zimbabwe Building and Construction Industry annual directory as well as establishing a Small and Medium Enterprises desk at its secretariat in Harare.

The desk is responsible for assisting ZBCA members in tendering for jobs as well as training in terms of business management and professionalism as well as gender mainstreaming in the construction

The ZBCA is a non-profit membership-based association registered in 1992 to represent indigenous building contractors in the categories of building, civil as well as electrical, mechanical and structural steel engineering fields.