IRIN (a UN humanitarian news and information service)
April 25, 2006

Following allegations of corruption, a local NGO has appealed for an audit of the tenders allocated in the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), the world’s largest water transfer operation.

“Bribery for tenders goes along with compromising of workmanship standards. We can only pray that, despite this, standards for constructing these kind of dams was not compromised, as it would be a double punishment to the people living around the Katse and Mohale dams,” said Mabusetsa Lenka of the Transformation Resource Centre
(TRC), an NGO fighting for the rights of communities displaced by the multi-dam project.
The appeal came a few weeks after reports of a second bribery case in connection with construction of the two dams. Lesotho’s former representative to the Highlands Water Commission (LHWC), Reatile Mochebelele, and his deputy, Letlafuoa Molapo,
have been accused of accepting a bribe to the value of about $163,965 from Germany’s largest engineering consultancy, Lahmeyer International.
Several companies involved in the project have been investigated after allegations of corruption and bribery. Lahmeyer, the second firm to be convicted, was fined more than a $1 million in 2003 for paying a bribe to an official. Acres International, a Canadian construction firm, was convicted of bribery in 2002.
A recent crack in the wall of the Mohale dam has sparked safety concerns, bringing corruption allegations back into the spotlight, said the TRC. “It is very scary when more people are being charged of bribery in different cases and, at the same time, the dam walls are cracking. It makes one wonder if the dams are safe at all,” Lenka commented.
The project has been funded by the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the European Development Fund, various export credit agencies, and European commercial banks.
www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=52707&SelectRegion=Southern_Africa [PDFver here]