Harare City Council (HCC) is reportedly weighing its legal option after FAW Zimbabwe supplied the local authority with single instead of double skip bin carriers it had ordered.
Council Environmental Management Committee minutes recommended the engagement of external lawyers for an independent legal opinion on how best to go about the matter. Part of the minutes read:
The committee discussed the matter noting that cancellation was also no longer possible because the trucks were already in use meaning there had been some form of acquiescence on the part of council.
The only option available was to claim the difference in the value of the single trucks supplied and the value of the double skip trucks which ought to have been supplied taking into cognisance the new exchange control regulations.
To worsen matters, HCC as per their agreement with FAW was supposed to conduct a pre-delivery inspection before taking delivery of the trucks. Acting chamber secretary Charles Kandemiiri said that there is no explanation as to how the oversight was made.
Environmental Management Committee chairperson, Kudzai Kadzombe, said that the oversight had financial costs to the council and had negatively affected service delivery. She also said that the councillors have recommended disciplinary action against a group of engineers who inspected the equipment and failed to realise that the trucks were not the ones the council had ordered.
The trucks had improperly secured bins, unsafe loading system, no ABS braking systems and had a nine-speed manual gear transmission contrary to the 7-8 speed synchromesh.
