Progress/Status Report | Crime Incidence disturbing completion of RHT construction

The proposed completion date has passed a while ago. The reason for this delay is a crime which was committed by one of our contractors. Mr. Abu Bakar Kamara, the mentioned contractor, received all materials necessary for the construction in Mamama and 70 percent of his salary in advance. Since our project doesn’t own an appropriate place to store materials, it seemed to be better to supply him all materials at once, so he could store them in the school at the location and work independently. By the time the contractor completed about 70 percent of the construction work he disappeared leaving no materials behind. After that we tried to trace him but unfortunately didn’t succeed. On top of that the contractor worked in a very bad manner, which caused us to redo some of the work which has already been done. Thereby material and personnel cost increased again.

Seeing ourselves responsible for those happenings, our staff didn’t receive any salaries for eight months to be able to cover the losses and the extra cost. Unfortunately the money gathered by that, wasn’t sufficient to pay to complete the construction. With an extraordinary support from Austria just before Christmas, we have been able to at least pay our staff five months salaries back. This was absolutely necessary as the situation turned out quite bad for our staff members at this time. Until now we haven’t been able to raise enough money from other sources to complete the tanks. Therefore we now have to admit, that we will not be able to cover for all the losses.

The status of construction of the two tanks is as following:
• Makande:
The tank is completed and the pump is installed. The collectors are there, but couldn’t be fixed yet, as the roof of the school wasn’t repaired by the community completely so far.
• Mamama:
The cover of the tank has not been constructed yet, as the construction materials and the pump were stolen. The collectors are there and can be fixed as soon as the tank is completed.

To be able to complete all constructions involved in the project we would need an additional fund of 3,237.93 US-Dollar.

We deeply regret to be in a position right now, where we have to ask for support again. But otherwise we will not be able to complete the project in the foreseeable future.