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Banning Fraudulent Contractors (06-2011)



I must confess that I was not excited when Pravin Gordhan revealed ways of fighting tender corruption.  In fact, I did not even pay attention to the TV news when this was shown.  This is because I have heard of initiatives to curb corruption but it somehow seems to rocket. What is worse is that one gets a feeling that culprits don’t pay for the wrong they do.  They move on and get rewarded with more opportunities for corruption.

There are examples of this lack of accountability.  We’ve heard for a while now that the Minister of Housing, Tokyo Sexwale, is busy demolishing RDP houses that were shoddily built.   This is a good project that assists in bringing the dignity of our people back because they should not continue to live in such houses under a democratically elected government.  Better built houses must be given to them.  What bothered me about this campaign is that I did not hear what will be happening to those contractors that failed the state and the people.   We further hear reports to Parliamentary committees of huge numbers of State employees who are getting tenders from government.  These get identified and we do not hear much about reprisal for that.

I felt that I had ample reason not to expect much from noises about curbing corruption.  This changed a couple of days ago when I saw media reports that relate to a list issued by Treasury on individuals and companied that are banned from doing business with government because of their conduct when previously contracted.  The “database of restricted suppliers”  revived my interest and made me go back to read the ‘National Treasury Instruction Note on Enhancing Compliance Monitoring and Improving Transparency and Accountability in Supply Chain Management” of Minister Gordhan.  It has a long title and hence I will just refer to it as the “Instruction note”.  In this note National Treasury requires that all tenders that are that are above R500000 must be reported to them by April and by August of each year. This is meant to stop departments from deciding on issuing tenders at anytime that they feel a need to help somebody “eat”.

Tenders that are above R10 million will have to be approved by Treasury and their bidding process will have to be audited.   A further requirement is for bidding companies’ directors, shareholders, trustees and key officials’ personal details to be published on government departments. This is meant to help departments in verifying whether any of these people are employed by the state, and whether they had previously messed up whilst working on government tenders.

A list was published of all those who were restricted or banned for doing business with government.  This was a huge step as the list contained businesses linked to a number of important people.  This ranged from businessman Tom Boya and the ruling Party’s Western Cape Secretary, Songezo Mjongile, who is affected by the bans because of a company named Linda Medical Supplies, of which he is listed as a Director. Mjongile explains that the Company belonged to his ex wife who is the one who defaulted.    Regardless of the outcome of Mjongile’s appeal, this is not good news for the ANC in the Western Cape as it faces a serious task of re-marketing itself to a province that has voted overwhelmingly against it.
  
What is exciting for me is that something appears to be happening to hold people accountable.  Many people who have defrauded government know nothing about doing business outside of government.  Listing and banning those who do shoddy work and fail to deliver to acceptable standards will ensure that “tenderpreuners” will take the public serious.  I am also not naïve as to believe that people will not try to beat the system. What is needed is strict monitoring and enforcement of these rules in conjunction with other initiatives.   I am now convinced that we are indeed being serious about stopping tender fraud regardless of who is involved. We also need the public to play their role and  for many of us to stop viewing complaints against corruption as being plots of conservatives who hates the Democratic government.   Minister Gordhan you’ve got my attention!!!

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