Factors leading to abandonment of public building infrastructure in Malawi the Case of Lilongwe District Council

Abstract

Building infrastructure projects in Malawi’s local authorities are unreasonably delayed and ultimately abandoned. This is due to several factors. The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors leading to the abandonment of public building infrastructure projects in Malawi, under the health and police sectors in Lilongwe District Council. Sixty-three (63) project abandonment sub attributes were identified through review, the project abandonment sub attributes then categorized into eight main groups, i.e., financial, procurement, contract management, planning, design, site, workmanship and/or community involvement related sub attributes. These factors were then studied, analyzed and evaluated in order of their importance and compared separately and combined across the police and health sectors of Lilongwe District Council. Fourteen (14) projects (police-8, health-6) were chosen (some incomplete and/or operational since they were commenced). Responses from the 117 project stakeholders (respondents) were collected through a survey questionnaire. Data analysis was statistically done using Microsoft Excel and SPSS. The RII, Crobatch alpha and Spearman’s methods were used to further analyze the data. Research findings reveal that financial and contract management related attributes ranked the highest as having contributed most to the project abandonment in the study sectors respectively. While results show variations across the sectors, it can also be observed that the Malawi Government funded projects under police while cooperating partners funded projects under health sectors. The study concludes that although financial and contract management attributes are key to building infrastructure abandonment, these factors are not mutually exclusive. It is therefore recommended that a further investigative study on these be done and replicated to other sectors to come up with relevant solutions to the problem of building infrastructure abandonment in police and health sectors of Lilongwe District Council.