Zimbabwe Parliament- What they said about the Belarus fire tender deal- Part 3

HON. CHOMBO: Thank you Hon. Speaker.  I would like to thank the Hon. Members for their contributions.  I will start by Hon. Nyamudeza, he asked about the brand of the machine we are buying.  Also, when they are going to deliver the machine and why we sourced from Belarus?  The machine we are buying is TLF Magirus from Belarus.  I do not know when they are going to deliver the machine.  Why we bought from Belarus, we all know that Zimbabwe is under sanctions.  For us to source foreign currency to procure what we want is not easy.  So we take advantage of the friendship that we have with other nations and acquire what we want in order to re-equip our local authorities.

Hon. Mahlangu stated that she would want us to avail the list of the participants who responded.  Also, to state to what level we did the consultations.  I had said that before that we are going to make the list available to Parliament.  Then Hon. Muchenje said she needs to know the rural local authorities, who responded.  The same – we are going to make the list available.  You also asked if the type of equipment is the same or it is made special for the areas.  As I said, the Chief Officers gave us specifications.  These fire tenders are specially made for the terrain of our country.

About the training, there is training that is going to be offered to those who are going to work with this equipment.  The training will be done here locally and also in Belarus.  Somebody was using Hon. Saruwaka’s gadget, I just picked the name from the gadget but I discovered that he also asked the last question.  He wanted to know why we are not using the Procurement Act.  As I said before that there was a bilateral agreement and it supersedes the procurement.  You also requested the full list of those who participated, which I said we are going to provide.  You also wanted to know the first month of payment that was done by the Ministry of Finance.  I am not privy to the exact date when it was done.  I will check with the relevant Ministry and make the information available.  Also, you wanted to know about the agreement and when it was entered into.  I will also try to avail that one.  I have not been privy to it but I will look for it and make it available to Parliament.

Hon. Chikwinya wanted me to furnish Parliament with the structure of the fire on the ground.  That one, I will avail the structure also to Parliament and see who is holding what position in the different local authorities.  You also want me to furnish Parliament with the resolutions of all the local authorities and when the resolutions were entered into.  I will also provide that but I made it clear that these resolutions from the local authorities came through the fire officers.

Hon. Hwende wanted to know how many have been purchased and how much is outstanding.  Also if we say Chief Officers, we list them, those who participated and I will provide the requested information.

Hon. Madzimure, you said in Harare there are consultations that are done.  On the consultations that were presented to Local Government, were they any that requested for fire tender?  As I said, the consultations were done.  For sure you know when people do the budgets initially you can see that there was request for fire tenders although they were not prioritised.  We prioritise other areas but when we got this bilateral agreement and saw that there were fire tenders we grabbed the opportunity and went on and consulted the relevant local authorities.  You then said the fire tenders are expensive, we should compare with others. I have a comparison here RT Rosenbauer US$518 000, TLF Magirus is US$468 800, HLF20 Zingman is US$499 000 and the ALF20 Sherman is US$474 300. The one that was recommended is going for US$10 000 less than what is currently the market value.

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