By Graeme Hosken, Mogomotsi Magome and Patrick Hlahla
A daming internal letter has raised serious questions around the procurement and management of tenders by the Tshwane Community Safety Department. It revealed how the city is expected to pay more than R5 million a year to rent a building from Roux Property Fund (RPF) although the fund does not even own the premises.
It is not known how the draft lease contract was drawn up between the fund and the city when the building is still owned by C-Max Investments 285 (Pty) Ltd.
RPF is owned by property mogul Roux Shabangu. He made headlines recently when national police commissioner, General Bheki Cele, announced that the SAPS headquarters was to be relocated to the same building.
That deal has been put on hold to allow for investigations by the Public Protector and the Special Investigating Unit to be completed.
RPF’s Marese Herbst declined to comment on the “very sensitive matter”. C-Max Investments owner Ismail Valli also declined to comment.
Other concerns raised include how more than R9m is being claimed from the city’s safety department by companies that have rendered services, but have yet to be paid.
These claims are for tenders for the installation, monitoring and maintenance of CCTV cameras and security services.
Other concerns are over the lack of a tender document for the monitoring and prevention of illegal land and building occupation around the city.
Dated Friday September 17, and written by Community Safety Department executive director, Chris Lekgetho, the letter is addressed to Tshwane Metro Police Department’s acting chief, Pinkie Mathabathe, and copied to her boss, MMC for Community Safety, Dikeledi Lehobye.
Both Lekgetho and Mathabathe have refused to comment.
Lehobye, who pleaded for more time last week to familiarise herself with the letter, is now out of the country on municipal business.
The CCTV tender is before the Pretoria High Court as one of the bidding companies, Omega Risk Solutions, is disputing the awarding of it to Morubisi Technologies.
Morubisi Technologies is supplying, installing, operating and maintaining the CCTV system.
The more than R9m in claims are made up of R432 004 for rent to C-Max Investments which owns Sanlam Centre (Middestad), where the department’s CCTV monitoring point is installed; and R8.6m to Morubisi Technologies for the installation, operation and maintenance of the CCTV system.
Lekgetho claims there is no lease contract between the city and C-Max Investments, therefore the payments cannot be made.
The department, Lekgetho said, also received a draft lease contract from RPF for leasing the Sanlam Centre for R5.1m a year.
Lekgetho said: “This state of affairs implies that the City of Tshwane is exposed to serious financial/operational risks… either company can at any time evict the CCTV nodal point which will have a major operational and financial impact.”
Another CCTV tender issue is the apparent non-payment of consulting firm, Techso, that provided technical support to the department in the tender process.
In July, Techso submitted an invoice of R404 928, but Lekgetho claimed it would not be paid as the department “is not aware of any contractual obligations towards the company”.
Techso refused to comment on the matter as it was sub judice.
Lekgetho is also concerned over the Morubisi Technologies invoice which he claims would exceed the available capital budget.
There was no indication as to how and when the payment would be made, he said.
Morubisi Technologies declined to comment on the invoice and referred questions back to the department.
On the security services tender, Lekgetho expressed concern over how a tender was awarded to Gondo Security Services and then taken away and given to Hotline Security Services.
Lekgetho said it appears Gondo was unaware it had lost the tender as it had sent an e-mail acknowledging the city’s letter of acceptance and said it was ready to provide the required service, by which time Hotline had already submitted an invoice for services rendered.
Hotline, Lekgetho said, cannot be paid as there is no approved deviation report for its services.
Lekgetho also expressed concern that a tender for the monitoring and prevention of illegal land and building occupation would lapse at the end of October without a new tender being in place. - Pretoria News