Johannesburg - Whistle-blowers within the South African Weather Service (SAWS) have sent the Public Protector a report titled “Stormy Weather”, which details alleged tender irregularities at the institution.
The 34-page document refers to the allegedly bad management of the entity’s chief executive, particularly with regard to tenders given to various companies under the Future Foresight Group, which commer- cialises and sells weather service products.
The whistle-blowers said it took them a long time to write the report because of fear of victimisation.
According to the report, in 2007 a company called BECO Future Foresight, which is part of the Future Foresight Group, performed a commercialisation strategy for the SAWS. This strategy is called Go-To-Market Plan.
The whistle-blowers say this market plan led to the development of a website which was also awarded to BECO for R3.5 million.
Later, a company called Weather Intelligence Systems (WIS), which is also part of the Future Foresight Group, entered into a commercial partnership with the SAWS.
The whistle-blowers believe that by producing the Go-To-Market Plan, then the development of the website and the commercialisation of the SAWS, the chief executive ignored the Public Finance Management Act.
The Treasury’s Practice Note 3 states with regard to the appointment of consultants: “A firm, which has been engaged by the accounting officer/ authority to provide goods or works for a project and any of its affiliates, should be disqualified from providing consulting services for the same project.
“Similarly, a firm hired to provide consulting services for the preparation of or implementation of a project and any of its affiliates should be disqualified from subsequently providing goods or works or services related to the initial agreement.”
SAWS spokeswoman Nthabeleng Mokitimi said the awarding of these various tenders to companies in the same group was not regarded as a conflict of interest, but rather “a natural continuation of services previously performed”.
Barry Gonin, a director at the Future Foresight Group, said they had facilitated discussions with the SAWS board in 2007 to help them with a strategy workshop.
From this the Go-to-Market Plan was developed “collectively by the participants, listing possible commercial opportunities that the SAWS could use to create additional sources of funding”.
“SAWS published the RFP SAWS0122 for the design and running of the website and for the development of certain commercial services. The two projects were therefore dealt with as a single instance,” said Gonin.
He said the Go-to-Market Plan was generic in nature, and the SAWS had developed these ideas into business concepts on its own.
The commercialisation partnership sees the SAWS’s data and products being marketed and sold by Weather Intelligence Systems.
The report indicates that the revenue generated from the sale of this product is then shared, with 32 percent going to the weather service and 68 percent going to Weather Intelligence Systems.
“More than two-thirds of the revenue collected from selling the organisation’s products and services goes to a company that markets and sells these products, while the SAWS, the producer and owner of the products and services, has to settle for less than one-third of the proceeds. This arrangement is obviously skewed in favour of WIS and at great expense to SAWS,” the whistle-blowers claim.
Mokitimi said the business arrangement between the SAWS and WIS was reached with “due consideration by both parties of the resources required to fulfil the contractual obligations together with the associated risk exposure”. Gonin confirmed that WIS pays SAWS “a share of revenue of about 32 percent”.
“SAWS neither incurs any incremental costs nor takes any business risk in developing the market.
“WIS uses its share of the revenue to pay all operational costs required to identify markets, develop the services for those markets and to support the services in market,” he said.
Part of the agreement, whose document The Star has seen, lists monetary penalties if any of the SAWS products are not operating at a high level. One of these parameters refers to radar data, which should operate at 80 percent.
But according to the whistle-blowers’ report, mismanagement of the radar network has led to its operating at 56.81 percent in the past year.
The SAWS radar network consists of 14 stations distributed throughout the country, and is used to determine the location and motions of weather phenomena such as storms, snow and hail.
In 2010, the weather service issued a R240m three-year tender to replace its radar network, but the whistle-blowers said it has not operated properly.
“The manner of the penalisation is such that, if the SAWS does not meet one of the targets, the penalty is then applied against all the services or products in the SAWS/WIS contract.
“This means that if the SAWS does not meet the 80 percent radar reliability requirement, the SAWS gets penalised and a portion of the revenue the organisation was due to get for lightning, satellite, weather forecasts, weather warning and radar is kept by WIS,” the report said.
The DA’s spokesman for environmental affairs, Thomas Hadebe, said the parliamentary committee was told that radar data had not achieved 55 percent operations.
Both the SAWS and Gonin said the agreement was not a penalty, but rather the revenue share iwa reduced.
Spokeswoman for the Public Protector Kgalalelo Masibi said they were currently assessing the report and were still determining whether they would investigate the claims.
THE STAR
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