With reference to the article published in The Rwanda Focus issue no. 2016 of the 26th November -2nd December 2012 entitled “Fierce pay dispute simmers between RSSB and Thomas & Piron GL”, RSSB management would like to give clear clarifications on the issue at hand.
RSSB (former Social Security Fund of Rwanda) signed a building contract with Thomas and Piron GL to construct the Grand Pension Plaza building at a total cost of 17.3 billions RWF.
To date, the building has been practically completed, pending a number of snags to be corrected for the building to be properly functional.
It should be noted here that so far 97% of the contract amount equivalent to 16.8 billions RWF has been paid by RSSB to Thomas & Piron GL. The remaining balance shall be paid after the final account is agreed upon by both parties.
Thomas and Piron GL issued an additional invoice of 6.9 billion RWF as the due balance for the final account.
However, in order to effect this important payment, which represents an increase of 33% from the original contract; RSSB had to undertake the necessary verification of the additional work performed and review in detail the final account.
The verification process resulted in conflicting amounts with significant variances on the cost of the final account as the amounts calculated by Thomas and Piron GL, the contractor, was 23 billions RWF when Triades, the supervisor of the project presented a total of 21 billions RWF while RSSB staff measured for 19,5 billions RWF.
RSSB management needed a harmonized figure to be able to effect the final payment.
It is in this regard, that on October 18th 2012 a meeting was held between Thomas & Piron GL MD Coralie PIRON, the Belgian Ambassador Mr. Marc PECSTEEN, RSSB MD Angelique KANTENGWA, and the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning Mrs Kampeta SAYINZOGA to discuss the pending payment.
During the meeting, all parties agreed that a professional quantity surveyor be hired to make detailed remeasurements of the work done to this project and close the issue.
In her letter dated 23rd October 2012, MINECOFIN’s Permanent Secretary officially communicated the resolution of the meeting to all parties present and authorized RSSB to fast tract the process of hiring the quantity surveyor.
RSSB wish to underline that it is very much willing to clear the pending payments.
The quantity surveyor has been hired and has started his verification work, as agreed Thomas and Piron GL will have permanent access to his work to check on progress.
After agreeing on the re-measurement total costs and repairing all remaining snags in the building, RSSB will immediately pay the final amount owed to Thomas & Piron GL.
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