At least five City of Tshwane senior officials should face criminal charges for their part in allowing irregular tender procedures that cost the Tshwane ratepayers nearly R292m after a forensic report looking into a Rooiwal wastewater treatment plant found they had flouted procurement rules.
The report was tabled in council yesterday.
The five were members of a Bid Evaluating Committee (BEC) whose failures to follow proper processes caused the city to incur nearly R292m in irregular expenditure.
“The failure by the BEC to evaluate tenderers in accordance with [applicable] clause resulted in the CMS, NJR and Blackhead JV being appointed as the successful bidder. Thus, the expenditure in terms of this tender to the value of R291,996,799.07 was irregular, in line with section 1 of the Municipal Finance Management Act of 2003.”
The report named BEC members and said they were “liable for the above-mentioned irregular expenditure in line with the provisions of section 32(1)(c) of the Municipal Finance Management Act of 2003”.
Sowetan has not named the persons because we were unable to reach them for their comments.
A BEC is responsible for the evaluation of bids submitted in response to a public invitation to tender. The committee must consist of officials from the departments requiring the goods or services and at least one supply chain management official.
Once preferred bidders have been identified, the BEC makes recommendations to the bid adjudicating committee and the contract is then signed off by the municipal manager.
In August 2021, Sowetan reported that an independent commission of inquiry found that the City of Tshwane had failed to account to the community of Hammanskraal about a “seemingly disappeared” R295m‚ which was set aside for the upgrade of the Rooiwal wastewater treatment plant.
Despite the award‚ little to no work had been done on the plant for what was supposed to be phase 1 of the project.
“We found the above to be suspicious and improbable in that the BEC members scored the bidders in the same manner. We could, however, not reperform the evaluation as some of the documents submitted by the bidders were not provided to us, such as curriculum vitae and certificates to prove that similar work had been performed by the bidders on past projects,” reads the report.
The officials formed part of the City’s bid evaluation committee that recommended CMS Water Projects, NJR Projects and Blackhead Ventures be appointed for Phase 1 of the construction project which started in October 2019.
Despite this huge sum, the report is silent on the municipality recouping the funds and instead, Ligwa Advisory Services, which was appointed to conduct the investigation, recommends the City’s Municipal Public Accounts Committee (Mpac) write-off R147,820,900.83 that was paid to the contractor from July 2020 to March 2022.
Parties such as ActionSA had previously raised concerns about how one of the companies had received the contract, with party president Herman Mashaba saying the company had no prior experience with wastewater works.
The forensic investigators recommended appropriate action be taken against the five officials for causing the city to squander millions of rand in irregular expenditure.
“The accounting officer in consultation with Group Human Capital should consider taking appropriate disciplinary action against the members of the Bid Evaluation Committee for negligently causing the irregular expenditure to the value of R291,996,799.07.”
The report recommended that a criminal case be instituted against BEC members and the companies they had wrongfully benefitted.
Among other things, the report found that the BEC had evaluated bids that had not submitted proof of required registration; disqualified a tenderer who had the requisite grading, allowed for companies that did not meet a critical and material requirement of having a legally required contractor certificate.
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