Road connecting Ho Chi Minh City to Trung Luong Expressway faces difficulties due to 'lost documents'

TPO - Determining the amount of work the investor has done at the BOT project connecting Vo Van Kiet with the Ho Chi Minh City - Trung Luong expressway is facing difficulties due to personnel changes and lost documents.

The Ho Chi Minh City Traffic Construction Investment Project Management Board (abbreviated as the Traffic Board) has just sent a document reporting to the City Department of Transport on the status of collecting information and related documents to determine the volume of work that the investor has done at the Vo Van Kiet connecting road project - Ho Chi Minh City - Trung Luong Expressway (phase 1).

The Vo Van Kiet - Ho Chi Minh City - Trung Luong Expressway connecting road project (phase 1) has a total length of 2.7 km, invested by Yen Khanh Group Joint Stock Company with a total investment of 1,557 billion VND.

The project starts from the Vo Van Kiet overpass intersection - National Highway 1 to the intersection with the access road to Ho Chi Minh City - Trung Luong Expressway.

According to the BOT contract, the project was scheduled to be completed in 2017 but was delayed. By 2019, the project had stopped construction. To date, the construction volume at the project has only completed about 12% of the contract value.

The section connecting Vo Van Kiet Street to Ho Chi Minh City - Trung Luong Expressway is under construction. Photo: HH

In mid-2022, the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee approved the policy of stopping the project to build the section connecting Vo Van Kiet Street to Ho Chi Minh City - Trung Luong Expressway (phase 1) under the BOT contract.

It has been nearly 2 years now, however, contract liquidation is still difficult because the parties have not agreed on the amount of money that the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee must pay for the volume of work that the investor has performed.

In the process of collecting information and related documents to determine the amount of work the investor has done on this project, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Transport said that since August 2020, the unit has organized many meetings and issued a series of documents urging the investor to collect related information and documents. However, coordination with the investor before July 2023 has encountered many difficulties.

Specifically, according to the HCMC Traffic Department, due to the construction stoppage, the unit's personnel changed. The replacement did not hold the old job, the investor sent an unauthorized person to the meeting, and the documents were lost.

Of the 11 consulting packages, the investor has only compiled complete documents and legal documents for only one consulting package for survey and construction drawing design. For the remaining consulting packages, the investor only has the contract, documents and legal documents attached and is having to contact the parties to get them reissued.

Regarding construction packages, the investor has implemented 7/12 packages. The value of the implemented packages is about 160 billion VND, of which the paid volume is about 92 billion VND. Currently, some quality management documents of the work performed by the contractors have also been lost. The investor is contacting the contractors to be provided with the documents again.

In addition, regarding the selection of an independent auditor and the time for performing the audit of the documents to finalize the volume, the investor expected to complete it by the end of January this year. However, due to difficulties related to synthesizing and completing the documents, the investor requested an additional month to have enough time to do so.

Recently, in the report on the results of reviewing the connection of expressways, the Department of Transport of Ho Chi Minh City has proposed that the City People's Committee direct the Department of Planning and Architecture and related agencies to review and update the relevant planning project as a basis for implementing investment in the construction of a new Vo Van Kiet road extending to Ho Chi Minh City Ring Road 3 (including an extension road of about 12.5km and an interchange). The total estimated investment is about 8,400 billion VND.

Huynh

Source: https://tienphong.vn/duong-noi-tp-hcm-voi-cao-toc-trung-luong-gap-kho-vi-ho-so-that-lac-post1616087.tpo