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EX-MP TIMOTHY ‘STALLS’ E880M ROAD PROJECT

09/07/2017 10:39:00 BY KWAZI MASUKU

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MBABANE – Multiple award-winning gospel artist and former Lubulini Member of Parliament Timothy Myeni’s property holds the key to an E880 million government road project.

The property is situated along the land through which under-construction multi-million Mbadlane -Manzini road will pass.
People owning homes next to the road or where the new road will go through are being compensated by government.
However, the Times SUNDAY has been informed of government’s challenge in paying what is due to the former legislator.
After vigorous investigations, the Times SUNDAY have established that Myeni, who is also a pastor, bought the land from a Nxumalo family which government has already compensated.

It is alleged that the deal was over E2 million.
Information reaching the Times SUNDAY is, when paying for the land, government through the Ministry of Public Works and Transport was not made aware that a certain portion belonged to the former legislator.
Consequently, the ministry has learnt that from the payment, nothing reached the hands of the renowned Swazi gospel icon and businessman.
As seen along the road leading to the property in question, the contractor –Inyatsi - has started clearing the land where the project will take place and in some places, the land has already been cleared. However, towards the location to where Myeni’s land is situated, there is no activity, pending finalisation of the matter between him and government.

Makhosini Mndawe, the Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Public Works and Transport, confirmed knowledge of the matter.
He pointed out that it was government’s procedure to compensate people who were to be moved to give way to public projects.
He said the saga involving land belonging to Myeni was as a result of such initiatives.

He explained that it was a norm that in some instances there were disagreements, which eventually ended in court.
“Since the owner of the farm is deceased, we paid the estate and unfortunately we discovered that part of the farm was sold to Myeni and it is going to be affected by the road project. As a result, my legal team advised that we engage all the parties involved in order to get to the truth and all submissions should be in black and white in the form of affidavits.”
Mndawe also mentioned that due to this situation, the project had been affected as work could not carry on until the matter was dealt with. He also stated that there will be a meeting in the coming week to put the matter to bed.
The PS then referred all questions to the ministry’s Chief Roads Engineer Vincent Dlamini.

Speaking to the Times SUNDAY, Dlamini said the issue will be finalised soon and as far as he was concerned, it was not a big one, at least for now. He attested that they had since engaged Myeni and the ministry was working on concluding the matter.
He said the reason the matter has dragged on for long was that government wanted to pay the rightful owner, in this case being Myeni.
“We are aware that the whole of the land belonged to a Nxumalo family and they sold part of it to Myeni.

The land was sold with structures, which happened to be the rental flats,but,the problem is that the structures also overlap to the Nxumalo land as well. When you look at the flats from a distance, you would conclude that they belong to the Nxumalos.”
Dlamini stated that the major reason the ministry was careful on this transaction was for audit purposes. He said if this was left unattended to, there would be legal challenges over the proposed payment in the future.
“Through the meetings, we want the Nxumalos to attest that they sold the land with the structures and also to acknowledge the overlap. It was through our evaluation process that we realised that there were such glitches.”
The engineer declined to declare financial figures, saying it was between government and the affected families.
Lastly, he pointed out that the contractor was engaged on the controversies that had developed.
He was responding after the Times SUNDAY asked if there were chances or not for the contractor to file complaints about delays when compiling a report after the conclusion of the project.