eBusiness Weekly
HARARE – Intratrek Zimbabwe, the local company that won the tender to set up a 100 Megawatt solar power project in Gwanda on Monday admitted that it does not have the financial capacity to carry through the project as its shareholders are quarreling over ownership of the company.
The company raised eyebrows after it won the multi-million-dollar project just a year after its establishment in 2012, riding on the back of its Chinese partners, Chint Electric.
Five years down the line, the company has failed to make headway with the project, leading the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Energy, chaired by Norton legislator, Temba Mliswa to call its managing director, Wicknell Chivayo to appear before it to clarify issues.
It was to be three hours of drama as Chivayo, who claimed to own 50 percent of the company, with the other said to be owned by his partner, Yusuf Ahmed, skirted around most of the questions thrown at him by the legislators.
The Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC), it emerged, was arm twisted by then Energy and Power Development, Dr Samuel Undenge to pay Intratrek a hefty sum of money before the company had done any work on the project site. Interestingly the firm had lost initial bid to a Chinese firm, China Jangxi, and was eventually somehow accommodated after the project was split among three companies.
ZPC officials previously told the committee that they paid $7 million to Intratrek to commence the project but Chivayo said this was not true, insisting the firm was paid just over $5 million.
The funds, he said were used in part to pay taxes to the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority, clearing the area where the solar panels would be installed, geo-technical survey, fencing, and constructing feeder roads, among others.
“As we proceeded with the work, we reached a hurdle when it was publicized that I had been paid by ZPC without getting a bank guarantee as per the contract agreement. ZPC stopped paying me and was demanding a bank guarantee. No one wanted to be associated with the project after the publicity we got,” he said.
Chivayo told the committee he had failed to get a bank guarantee for the project, which would have cost him around $350 000. He admitted to the committee that after failing to secure a guarantee, he approached Undenge, who directed the power utility to go ahead and pay him “to get the project going.”
Chivayo rejected all assertions that he had been corruptly awarded the tender and used political connections to force processes to go through without meeting project specifications. Though he posted pictures on social media dining with the former first family, Chivayo said he had no connections to them or any of the previous former Energy Ministers.
But he admitted that his company had ties with that owned by ZPC board chairman Stanly Kazhanje, who is suspected to have penned the tender documents for Intratrek to “win” the bid.
“I think I knew him by the time I was awarded the tender,” Chivayo told the committee on being quizzed on whether his company had a relationship with Kazhanje’s consulting firm, Terminal Engineers.
The Parliamentarians also quizzed Chivayo on his qualifications and his past criminal record to which he said he did not have qualifications in the energy field but was using his experience in business. He said he was convicted in 2005 for “confiscation of profits and fraud” and was jailed for two years. An appeal to quash the conviction was still pending at the Supreme Court, he added
Meanwhile, as the drama ensued, the situation took an unexpected turn when lawyers from Bruce Tokwe Commercial Chambers, who were appearing on behalf of Chivayo’s partner Yusuf, told the committee Wicknell had ceded his shareholding in Intratrek.
“As things stand Mr Chivayo is no longer a shareholder in Intratrek,” Bruce Tokwe said, adding the company had for a long time been failing to discipline Chivayo.
Tokwe hinted that Chivayo seemed to have protection from higher political offices in the former government after telling the committee the “dynamics have now shifted” which was why the other partner in the company went quiet at the time but was now speaking out. While agreeing he had ceded his shareholding to Yusu in 2014, Chivayo said he got back his shares after he clinched the solar power plant deal.
Tokwe said the shareholders in Intratrek had the financial capacity to go ahead with implementation of the project without having to “go to anyone with a begging bowl.” He said the Intratrek board would soon be re-constituted.
The committee is due to meet the management of the ZPC on the way forward for the project and to clarify the $2 million discrepancy in the amount Intratrek claims to have been paid. – New Ziana