By RFIPubliée on 18-07-2019Modified on 18-07-2019 at 01:45

The Congolese president on Wednesday (July 17th) visited the construction sites launched in Kinshasa as part of his emergency program, which notably provide for the separation of jobs at 9 sites. According to the Head of State, all work will be completed by December 2019.

Pumping roundabout, after a crowd at the entrance of the yard, Felix Tshisekedi goes directly to the huge scaffolding in the middle of the road. In four hours of inspection in several communes of Kinshasa, he listens and asks questions. In some places, the work has not really changed.

Benjamin Wenga, General Manager of the Office of Roads and Drainage (OVD), explains that this depends in particular on the nature of the soil. He adds that some studies take time.

" The work that we are doing is specialized work, it's a bit like medicine, the heart operation work ," he justified. According to its office, the rate of realization on the set of works is currently 40%.

Projects to finish before the end of the year

Welcomed by the songs of the workers who demand better wage conditions, Felix Tshisekedi also discussed with some of them and immediately arrested the Chinese who lead the work. " What I'm going to tell you, with kindness, is that I want their conditions and work and life to be improved. Because you, you will receive money. This money, too, must enjoy it, because it is they who have worked, "says the president.

Read also: DRC, the 100 days of Tshisekedi, the fear of unfulfilled promises

At the end of his tour, he said he was relieved " both in relation to the progress of the work and, above all, in terms of solutions to find to annoy the less motorists ". According to the new schedule, all the grade separations visited will have to be inaugurated before the end of 2019.

The construction of houses entrusted to a single manager

At the same time, civil society is concerned about contracts awarded over the counter for tens of millions of dollars under the emergency program - grade separations are only one part. At the heart of the fears, we find the construction of 4,500 prefabricated houses in five provinces of the country, sold by the Turkish company Karmod.

With the 100-day program, Lebanese businessman Jammal Samih has won two contracts worth more than $ 114 million for two of his companies, Samibo and Husmal. What is challenging civil society is that not only are these contracts too important to be signed by agreement - exorbitant even, each house is worth $ 19,000 per unit - but they are also attributed to two companies. created by the same manager.

An illegal attribution?

For Congolese NGOs, the awarding of these contracts is even illegal under the Procurement Procedures Manual. But for the emergency program monitoring committee set up by the Presidency, what counts is the result.

If the two companies are recent - Samibo was created on August 8, 2018 and Husmal on April 25, 2019, Jammal Samih would be an experienced entrepreneur who participated in his time in the rehabilitation of national radio and television.

On both contracts, one would have been inherited from the time of Joseph Kabila. For the second signed last June, the presidency says it had no choice, Husmal became the exclusive representative in the DRC of these prefabricated houses.

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