Fiji’s Attorney-General and Minister for Economy Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum has cleared the air on the construction of the proposed Fiji National University’s (FNU) Labasa campus saying the contractor was terminated for non-performance.
Mr Sayed-Khaiyum revealed this in Parliament last Wednesday in response to Opposition MP Professor Biman Prasad’s comment on the progress of the construction saying it was “in trouble”.
“I am told that the contractor has been fired and the amount of work that the contractor did is not commensurate with the amount of money that he has already been paid with,” Prof Prasad had said in Parliament.
In response, Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said the construction work was contracted out to a company called Kartik’s Construction.
However, he said because of non-performance and after 47 per cent of the works had been completed, the contractor had been given the termination notice, “essentially because of non-performance”.
“It is not that they have not been paid more money than what they have done work for. The reality is because of non-performance, they are very behind so now we are going through the machinations to be able to get somebody else to do the work,” Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said.
The FNU Labasa campus is being built next to the Damodar City project site.
“…We hope that with the new contractor coming on board, we will be able to complete this as soon as possible.
“The plan was to complete it this year. It looks like it will not be completed this year as we have already another 53 per cent of the works to be completed but this is one of the challenges that the FNU did have in respect of managing large contracts and not having the internal capacity to manage those contracts.”
He said the Construction Implementation Unit (CIU) of the Ministry of Economy was now dealing with this matter.
