Johannesburg - Public Works left the organisation of the annual cabinet lekgotla so late that teams had to work through the weekend to get the venue ready for Monday.
Although it’s at the presidential guest house in Bryntirion, Pretoria, the national Department of Public Works wanted marquees, more than 100 tables and tablecloths, dozens of chairs, 1 000 napkins, a sound system, flat-panel monitors, air conditioning, VIP toilets and flowers - a six-page list of infrastructure requirements.
The job also included a back-up generator, just in case Bryntirion was load-shed.
While Public Works called for bids for the infrastructure job in early May, with a closing date at the end of that month, the tender was awarded only on Thursday and the contractor, Crocia Events, moved onto the site on Friday to start work.
A businessman from Crocia Events, who didn’t want to be named, wasn’t surprised by the late tender award but said they were able to get the job done on time and handed over the site to Public Works at 5pm on Monday.
“The general trend in government is that they have a weakness of not appointing service providers on time,” he said.
“It is a general trend. I wasn’t shocked, but the reality is that we had to work 24/7.”
Crocia pulled in their full team of 53 people and worked through the weekend, finishing the job three hours ahead of schedule.
“As much as it was short notice - we would have wanted maybe an extra day or so - it was highly doable, and that’s why we accepted the job,” he said.
Getting jobs like that done at the last minute means paying employees overtime, which is usually not included in the bids, so businesses might lose money as they can’t change the contract price when it’s finally offered. “Because you are hungry, you still do it,” said the businessman.
The contractors weren’t told why the contract was awarded so late, and didn’t ask.
Public Works publicly listed the cost of the job as R2.657 million, but then said Crocia’s infrastructure contract was for R1.06m, which Crocia confirmed.
Public Works spokesman Thami Mchunu said the R2.657m price was a mistake, incorrectly loaded onto the department’s website.
Mchunu previously said the average cost of a cabinet lekgotla was R1.1m.
By late on Monday Mchunu couldn’t provide an explanation for the late awarding of the tender, saying officials had not yet given him an explanation.
Crocia Events’s sole director and owner is Phuti Legodi.
There was a second director, Nozuko Mbalula, who is married to Minister of Sport and Recreation Fikile Mbalula.