{"id":209795,"date":"2025-10-14T07:54:02","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T05:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/lesotho\/lesotho-ha-belo-power-project-costs-spiral-to-m170-million\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T07:54:02","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T05:54:02","slug":"lesotho-ha-belo-power-project-costs-spiral-to-m170-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/lesotho\/lesotho-ha-belo-power-project-costs-spiral-to-m170-million\/","title":{"rendered":"Lesotho: Ha Belo Power Project Costs Spiral to M170 Million"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"6\"><em>&#8230;as Phaks JV is booted out<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"5\"><em>&#8230;And SA contractor roped in<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"34\"><strong>T<\/strong>HE construction of the corruption riddled Ha Belo electricity substation in Butha-Buthe, initially budgeted at M86.6 million, is now expected to cost more than M170 million upon completion, effectively doubling the original project cost.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"29\">It has emerged that the Ministry of Energy has directly engaged South African electrical engineering firm Actom (Pty) Ltd, which will be paid M49,720,215.42 to complete the remaining works.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" style=\"text-align: center;\">\n  <span style=\"font-size: 110%;\"><br \/>\nKeep up&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202510130451.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 Southern Africa <a title=\"Lesotho\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/southern-africa\/lesotho\/\">Lesotho<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;as Phaks JV is booted out &#8230;And SA contractor roped in THE construction of the corruption riddled Ha Belo electricity substation in Butha-Buthe, initially budgeted at M86.6 million, is now expected to cost more than M170 million upon completion, effectively doubling the original project cost. It has emerged that the Ministry of Energy has directly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":209796,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1406],"tags":[258,256,49926,11509,4717,1407,52574,5118,257,7047,6504,254,24656],"class_list":["post-209795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lesotho","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-belo","tag-costs","tag-lesotho","tag-lesotho-news","tag-m170","tag-million","tag-news","tag-power","tag-project","tag-south-africa-today","tag-spiral"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}