Durban - A tender botch-up has resulted in more than 800 KwaZulu-Natal high schools being still without books in important subjects such as mathematics and science - with exams just weeks away and barely two months left of the academic year.
Pietermaritzburg High Court found on Friday that the conduct of the KZN Department of Education had contributed to pupils at those schools being prejudiced.
Acting Judge Piet Bezuidenhout ordered the department to provide Modlin E-Learning Solutions, a publisher specialising in educational textbooks, with a letter of acceptance of the tender awarded to it earlier this year, and purchase orders so that the company could source and distribute the 640 000 textbooks to 837 schools.
Modlin had taken the department to court after it failed to provide the necessary purchase orders that would enable the company to supply and distribute the resources to high schools across the 12 districts of the province.
This resulted in the company incurring massive expenses with no remedy for recovery, and the high schools in question left without the books they needed.
Company director, David Modlin, said Modlin E-Learning Solutions stood to lose millions of rand if the department did not provide it with the relevant purchase orders to execute the tender.
The company was awarded the tender on March 14 to supply and distribute physical science, maths and natural science dictionaries for grades 10, 11 and 12. The dictionaries are learning tools to enable children to reference theories and terminology associated with these specific critical subjects.
The notice of intention to award the tender to the company was issued earlier, in January, but then two unsuccessful bidders appealed against the decision.
On March 6, the department’s Bid Appeals Tribunal dismissed the appeal and the decision to award the tender to Modlin E-learning Solutions was upheld.
On March 14, the finance MEC confirmed the decision.
But to proceed with the tender, the department needed to provide purchase orders, which would allow the company to proceed with the provision of goods.
The department opposed the application, arguing that the intention to award a tender did not equate to it being officially awarded and that no binding contract between the parties existed because a letter of acceptance was never issued.
However, Bezuidenhout found that there was no dispute about the tender being correctly awarded to the company. He found that the tender had been awarded after the correct procedure had been followed, and thus a letter of acceptance should have been sent to Modlin E-Learning Solutions.
“There is no justification for the department not to have done so. Considering that these school dictionaries for important subjects have not been provided to learners for some time due to the department’s conduct, such learners are being severely prejudiced and it is therefore necessary that these books be supplied to the schools as soon as possible,” he said.
Department spokesman, Muzi Mahlambi, said on Sunday night that the verdict had been noted.
“The top management will study the judgment this week and come up with an amicable way forward.”
Daily News