Secretary to Parliament Xolile George has hinted that the cost of rebuilding Parliament, after the fire in 2022, may be more than the allocated R2 billion.
He said at the moment they were sitting at 41% of the design and the figure may go up.
He said an independent panel will work on the project and the final figures to rebuild Parliament will be signed off by National Treasury and the national legislature itself.
But there was no actual figure because the detailed design has not been completed.
George was on Friday briefing the joint standing committee on financial management of Parliament.
George also said there were delays on the removal of the rubble. They had to finish the removal of the rubble in May last year, but could not because of a number of reasons.
Parliament had earlier projected that it will complete the rebuilding process by the end of next year.
During the Medium Term Policy Statement in 2022 Finance Minister, Enoch Godongwana, allocated R2bn for the rebuilding project. An additional R118 million was allocated during the Budget in February.
But George said it was still early to say what will be the true cost of the rebuilding of Parliament.
“We were consistent honourable members to say that this is the amount allocated. It is no way saying this is the total amount to rebuild Parliament. This is one point we have been consistent to make reference to precisely because out of the detailed design, which we have reported on today, we are sitting at 41% of the detailed design.
“By the time the full design is done there will be engineering scoping, there will be assessment engineering economics to striking the balance between maintenance of heritage and the modernisation we have now explained around the buildings. That detailed design may either confirm that this is the amount we need on the actual brick and mortar or it is more,” said George.
The final design, which will be signed off by Parliament and National Treasury will state the actual cost to rebuild Parliament.
“Indeed the amount may go up. But we have no crystal ball at this point to be able to say will it be R2bn, will be it R2.5bn or R3bn? All of those figures will come out of the detailed design stage wherein we are sitting at 41%,” said George.
He said they have encountered delays on the removal of the rubble. They had to consult various stakeholders because of the heritage nature of the building.
He said National Treasury regulations require that projects above R400 million an independent panel must be appointed to review every stage of the project. They had to finish the removal of the rubble by May last year, but they could not because the contractor who had been appointed pulled out of the tender a month before the work started.
Parliament had to find another contractor to do the work. That also caused delays. The other issue they experienced was that they had to carefully manage methane gas that was underground because of the amount of volumes of water they used to suppress the fire. There was a lot of gas. Extracting water may have rendered the building combustible.
siyabonga.mkhwanazi@inl.co.za
Politics