The Bulawayo City Council (BCC) is weighing its options after Terracotta Trading (Pvt) Limited, which was awarded the tender to develop the former Egodini taxi rank into a modern mall and regional transport hub, repeatedly failed to meet deadlines after taking over the site in 2016.
The company was awarded the tender in 2015 to transform the area, but eleven years later only a section of the project has been opened.
Responding to questions during a media engagement at the Council Chambers on Wednesday, Acting Town Clerk Mrs Sikhangele Zhou said the South African company missed the July 1, 2026 deadline given by council.
“Egodini project continues to be a headache to us. For starters, they are out of time, and they changed their shareholding structure. They had promised that the changes would strengthen them so that they would be able to resume work,” she said.
“They were set to resume works on the first of July according to what they had promised us, but they have failed to do so. We have put them on terms—that is, to ask them to explain themselves so that we may consider our options going forward if it still fails.
“The city had thought that there was hope with the restructuring of Terracotta. We thought we could give the new structure a chance to complete the project, but we were disappointed when they did not return.”
Mrs Zhou said the council was watching the company closely and that the action to be taken would be determined by its response.
Stakeholders have said the non-completion of the project was responsible for chaos in the city centre, with multiple illegal pick-up points used by kombis that refuse to use the opened section.
Source: The Herald.