Exodus joys as Harare-Beitbridge road rehabilitation set to begin
HARARE – Exodus and Company is celebrating its entry into the construction big leagues after challenging 16 companies to exit five construction companies that will rehabilitate the Harare-Beitbridge road.
The five contractors were reportedly selected following a closed tender in which 20 Category A civil engineering contractors submitted bids for the widening and rehabilitation of five sections along a 100 kilometer stretch off the Harare-Beitbridge highway.
We “are honored to be among the top five road contractors to have won the tender for the rehabilitation and widening of the Harare-BeitBridge road #wewillrebuild,” the company said on its official Facebook page, confirming information that the government is organizing tenders for the publication of the project.
The companies, which include Fossil, Tensor Systems, Masimba Construction and Bitumen, have each been tasked with rehabilitating and widening a 20-kilometre stretch of highway that has become a death trap.
The project is expected to cost taxpayers more than Z$2 billion.
Exodus and Company, which has made a name for itself as a home builder with the delivery of around 2,000 homes on various projects, including developments in Madokero and Mabvazuva, will add the 20 km project to the 13 km that he already on Kopa Road.
The company has completed approximately 157 km of road rehabilitation projects since 2017.
The dualisation of the Beitbridge-Chirundu motorway was first planned in the late 1980s, but the tender was not awarded to ZimHighways, a consortium of local contractors, until 2002.
The company failed to complete the project for more than a decade after hyperinflation rendered Zimbabwean dollar listings worthless. The tender was canceled but the parties had to fight in court until 2013.
In December 2016, after three years of dispute, the government awarded the $985 million tender to Geiger International (a company registered in Austria and based in China).
The tender was increased over time to $2.7 billion and the road was divided into three sections, namely the 570 km long Beitbridge-Harare road (eight toll booths); Harare-Chirundu, 342 km (six toll booths) and Harare-Ring Road, 59 km (three toll booths).
After three years of duplicating headlines in the local press with no progress on the ground, the government withdrew the tender in April 2018 and awarded it to another Chinese company called Anhui Foreign Economic Construction Corporation (Afecc) .
Earlier this year, the government announced it would split the Beitbridge-Harare highway into nine sections to be built by local businesses and that $150 million had been allocated to build detours on three sections of the busy road.
Work on the three diversions was completed despite 23,000 liters of tar going missing during a state deportation to Chivhu in March.
