Tbilisi City Council member, Irakli Abesadze, on air on Rustavi 2, blamed Tbilisi City Hall employees for being irresponsible during a discussion of the Zahesi bridge rehabilitation. According to Mr Abesadze, the company which won the tender, Commercial Construction Corporation Bridge Ltd, did not fulfil its obligation even though Tbilisi City Hall already paid the company 40% of the total amount envisaged by the contract. Mr Abesadze stated: "Tbilisi City Hall is now unable to either complete the work or put the money back into the budget. Of the GEL 1,790,000 which was paid in advance, the company did only GEL 100,000 worth of work. This means that the other GEL 1,670,000 has to be found and put back into the budget."
FactChecktook interest in the Zahesi bridge rehabilitation project.
On 13 November 2014, Tbilisi City Hall announced an electronic tender for rehabilitation work for the bridge-aqueduct close to the Zahesi settlement with the Commercial Construction Corporation Bridge Ltd having won the tender. The respective contract between Tbilisi City Hall and the aforementioned company was signed on 31 December 2014. The contract envisaged reconstruction work on the railway viaduct and the bridge-aqueduct close to Zahesi. The total amount of the contract was GEL 4,462,000 (of this, GEL 941,898 was allocated for the reconstruction of the railway viaduct and GEL 3,520,101 for the reconstruction of the bridge-aqueduct). According to the contract, the work was to have been completed in 400 calendar days.
In 2015, Tbilisi City Hall transferred Gel 1,784,800 as an advance to the company (the payment of the advance money is regulated by ordinance N508 of Tbilisi City Hall issued on 4 September 2014). As of October 2015, Commercial Construction Corporation Bridge Ltd completed only GEL 384,885 worth of the work (GEL 325,986 was spent for the reconstruction of the railway viaduct and GEL 58,899 was spent for the reconstruction of the bridge-aqueduct). Of the advance money it received, the company has not completed GEL 1,405,115 worth of work. According to the contract, the 400 calendar day time period for the completion of the project will terminate in February 2016. However, as of October 2015, only 8.7% of the total amount of money allocated for the rehabilitation project has been used.
FactCheckread the part of the contract which deals with the advance money. It reads: "The usage of a forward payment (advance) is permissible only if the company presents an unconditional locked-in bank guarantee (whose expiration date should be at least 30 calendar days after the date of the termination of the rehabilitation work) which is not more than 40% of the total amount of the contract. The advance money should be used solely for meeting the obligations associated with necessary purchases." Therefore, the advance money is protected by a bank guarantee.
FactCheckcontacted the Head of the Buildings and Engineering Infrastructure Construction and Rehabilitation Management Unit of the Improvement Service of Tbilisi City Hall, Dimitri Tatinashvili. According to Mr Tatanashvili, Commercial Construction Corporation Bridge Ltd did indeed fail to complete the work envisaged by the contract. Therefore, the contract with the company was cancelled and NCC, another construction firm, took over the reconstruction work on the railway viaduct. A new tender is being prepared for the reconstruction of the bridge-aqueduct which will be announced in a few days.
Of note is that according to the aforementioned contract (point 6.1), the customer is authorised to control the process of the fulfilment of the contractual obligations at every stage of the rehabilitation work. Therefore, Tbilisi City Hall perhaps should have been more vigilant and more actively observed the construction process, especially as concerns the slow work pace. Today, on 4 November 2015, the Mayor of Tbilisi, Davit Narmania, apologised to Tbilisi’s citizens for the improper road rehabilitation work being carried out by different companies and underlined that several of them had their contracts with Tbilisi City Hall cancelled whilst new electronic tenders were announced and the remainder of the work will be continued in the upcoming days. The result of this specific case is that the completion of the reconstruction work on the Zahesi railway viaduct and bridge-aqueduct will be postponed to an unknown date and Zahesi’s residents will need to continue to use the inconvenient bypass road for some time yet.
Conclusion On 31 December 2014, Tbilisi City Hall signed a contract with Commercial Construction Corporation Bridge Ltd for the reconstruction of the Zahesi railway viaduct and bridge-aqueduct. The total amount of the contract was GEL 4,462,000. In 2015, the aforementioned company received GEL 1,784,800 (40% of the total amount of the contract) but has so far done only GEL 384,885 worth of the work (Irakli Abesadze named a different number but later, in his interview with FactCheck,
explained that he made his statement on 3 October and at that time possessed a document which confirmed the completion of only GEL 100,000 worth of the construction work. Mr Abesadze managed to obtain the full documentation only on 7 October). According to Tbilisi City Hall, due to the incomplete work, Commercial Construction Corporation Bridge Ltd had its contact cancelled. Tbilisi City Hall’s advance payment is secured with a bank guarantee which means that the budget should not lose that portion of the money which has not been spent.
Therefore, FactCheck concludes that Irakli Abesadze’s statement is MOSTLY TRUE.
