Tshwane leasing contract expires, but won’t affect service delivery - Mpho Nawa

TSHWANE head administrator Mpho Nawa. Picture: Jacques Naude African News Agency (ANA)

TSHWANE head administrator Mpho Nawa. Picture: Jacques Naude African News Agency (ANA)

Published Sep 2, 2020

Share

Pretoria - Residents in Pretoria can breathe a sigh of relief that no municipal services will be disrupted after a contract for leasing a fleet of vehicles effectively expired on August 31.

The contract in question was awarded in 2015 under the ANC-led administration for the hiring of general construction vehicles, yellow plant machines, specialised vehicles, refuse removal vehicles and equipment.

City departments relied largely on leased vehicles for rendering services such as refuse removal and repairing water leaks.

Head administrator Mpho Nawa allayed fears that residents may experience a breakdown in service delivery due to non-availability of vehicles.

“The City is looking at other means of ensuring the services are not disrupted.

“The interim provisions will be done in line with the provisions of the Municipal Finance Management Act and supporting regulations,” Nawa said.

He was responding to claims by the DA that many municipal operations would grind to a halt because the City had not appointed new contractors.

DA mayoral candidate Randall Williams said City departments would no longer be able to provide crucial basic service delivery to residents without vehicles or equipment.

Williams said the existing contract was awarded under the ANC-led administration. It was extended by a team of administrators to August 31 this year.

“The City received over 700 bids for the new contract, which closed on July9, 2020, yet to date it has not been adjudicated or awarded.

“The ANC administrators have clearly had no oversight over the supply chain processes in the City,” Williams said.

Nawa conceded that more than 700 companies applied to bid for the latest contract, which closed in July.

“The process to ensure proper handling of submissions, scanning of all tender documents, interruptions owing to one member of the evaluation committee testing positive for Covid-19, has meant delays.

“This is a critical contract for the City. It has therefore meant exercising extra caution, which has caused delays but was meant to avoid any challenges to the process,” he said.

Nawa said another reason for the delays was because administrators identified that the procurement process had not been fully followed.

“There is no way we can take short cuts. We wanted the process to be clinical so there are no comebacks,” he said.

The City was finalising the process to ensure service providers were in place to avoid any service delivery interruptions. In 2016 the City was entangled in a legal fight with a businessman, Pierre Diedericks, who was allegedly overlooked for a multimillion contract despite possessing all the resources required to do the work.

Diedericks, director and shareholder of JL Excavators, at the time cried foul that a co-operative associated with Tshepo 10 000, a pet project highly praised under the administration of former mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa, was unlawfully given an advantage over his company.

Diedericks said the matter was raised with the former DA administration, but without success.

He claimed contracts were still being awarded by the “corrupt ANC board” and that nothing had been done under the DA-led administration to prevent such activities.

Pretoria News

Related Topics:

City of Tshwane