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Zvamaida Murwira Senior Reporter
A Harare firm that had approached the Supreme Court challenging the Administration Court ruling upholding Zimbabwe Electricity and Distribution Company’s decision to award a $1,2 million tender to Pito Investments has turned the heat on its lawyers after it was directed to pay wasted costs for the indefinite deferment of its case. BT Critical was directed by the Supreme Court last week to pay wasted legal costs after the judges noted that they had not been furnished with supplementary heads of arguments that the firm sought to rely on when the superior court sat to hear the appeal.

In its appeal, BT Critical, armed with an opinion from electronics expert, Engineer Francis Masawi, argued that the Administrative Court upheld a decision that was unlawful because Pito Investments’ bid was not technically compliant and that ZETDC had deliberately misrepresented to State Procurement Board that it was.

In his opinion, Eng Masawi said, the second option of Pito Investments’ bid which won the tender, although it was the lowest priced, did not meet the redundancy requirements specified in the addendum and therefore was not technically compliant.

The Supreme Court had last year granted a provisional order to BT Critical to suspend the tender pending determination of the case after finding some merit in the appeal.

The tender was for site survey, design, engineering, manufacturing, supply, delivery, training, installation and commissioning of a wide monitoring protection and control system complete with application software at specific locations.

In last week’s hearing, the Supreme Court directed that BT Critical pay the wasted costs on the basis that the firm must have briefed its lawyers late resulting in the late filing of court papers.

Armed with court order, lawyers for ZETDC and Pito Investments to write to BT Critical, Mambosasa Legal Practitioners who were instructing Advocate Tazorora Musarurwa and Mr Sylvester Hashiti demanding wasted legal costs to the tune of $9 000 for the one hour that the case was heard.

The wasted legal costs were in respect of Advocate Fadzai Mutombeni ($2 000) and Adv Thabani Mpofu ($7 000).

This prompted BT Critical, led by its chief executive, Mr Blessing Chimangah, to protest to its lawyers threatening to take his complaint to the Law Society of Zimbabwe arguing that it was his legal counsel who should bear the costs.

In a letter written to one of the firm’s lawyer, Advocate Hashiti, Mr Chimangah accused his lawyers of failing to protect him by advising the Supreme Court that he was not to blame for the late filing of the heads of arguments as he had briefed his counsel more than five months prior to last week’s hearing.

“In a meeting that we had with you and Adv Musarurwa, in the latter’s chambers, you advised us that you were going to do the papers to the Supreme Court and have the matter postponed to a later date since you would be travelling, which you did not.

“Instead you did send Adv Musarurwa who was ill-prepared and he even came to court late,” said Mr Chimangah in his letter of complaint.

“In view of the above, we are writing to demand as we hereby do the following (a) to explain to us why you failed to submit the relevant papers to the Supreme Court, so the matter could be postponed to a later date as per your advice, (b) Kindly explain why the supplementary heads of argument delivered to the parties involved a day before the court date and the judges did not even have them. We view this to be very unprofessional,” wrote Mr Chimangah.

“Give us the strategy you are going to apply to correct the professional mistake you made as we have every reason to believe that your carelessness is going to affect the outcome of this matter. Please kindly furnish us with the information referred to above by not later than February 24, 2017 failure of which we shall approach the LSZ for advice and the court for an order compelling you and Adv Musarurwa to supply the requested information and the damage suffered on your account.”