The Board of the South African National Roads Agency SOC Limited (SANRAL), together with Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula, will convene a media briefing to give an update on the cancellation of some of SANRAL’s tenders amounting to R17.473 billion.
Over the past two days several reports have appeared in the media concerning the cancellation of SANRAL tenders. “It should immediately be obvious to any right thinking individual that this decision would not have been taken for flimsy reasons”, SANRAL said in a statement.
“Some of these comments came from captains of industry in the construction sector who, it would seem, expect the SANRAL Board to disregard the violation of Board resolutions and the flouting of procurement policies and procedures,” SANRAL Board Chairperson Themba Mhambi said.
MEDIA BRIEFING
The briefing will address the following issues:
- Non-compliance with and violation of a Board resolution which led to a material irregularity in the tendering process.
- The involvement of external design consultants in the evaluation of tenders and therefore arrogating SANRAL’s power to determine qualifying bidders to external private individuals. This constitutes a material conflict of interest.
- Reduction and cancellation of sub-contracting requirements without Board approval resulting in the exclusion of black economic empowerment companies at sub-contracting level and losing them more than R2 billion.
- Patterns in the allocation of contracts in the past three years to show SANRAL’s support for the industry but also illustrating monopolies which are at the heart of the misinformation about the cancellation of these tenders.
- Recommendation of entities that should have been disqualified.
- Other lapses in the tendering processes.
BUSINESS REPORT