Omatjete water tender tussle settled

The Windhoek High Court on Friday ordered that the cancelled tender to supply water to the dry area of Omatjete and its surrounding communities proceed as planned.

Judge Orben Sibeya set aside the decision of the Review Panel to cancel the tender awarded to Henimma Investments. He further ordered Erongo Regional Council to honour the awarding it had initially given to Henimma Investments and for the tender to start without any delay.

Sibeya ruled in favour of Henimma Investments, who sued the review panel after it decided to re-advertise the tender it had awarded on 20 December last year. The court indicated the reasons for the orders will be given at a later stage.

The tender in question is for the construction of water pipelines and pumps for water supply to Omatjete and its surrounding areas. The pipelines will cover a distance of 23km.

Before Henimma was notified as a successful bidder, the bid evaluation committee last year recommended that the bid be awarded to them as they had the “lowest responsive bid” of N$17 million. On 20 March, the company sued the review panel and Erongo Regional Council for cancelling the tender it had awarded to it and ordering for the bidding process to start afresh.

In their suit, the company claims that after it was awarded the tender in December 2022 and the standstil period within which to lodge an application for reconsideration had lapsed, it was surprised to see a re-advertisement of the same tender in New Era in February.

“The applicant and I were not aware that an application for reconsideration was submitted… it thus came as a shock whilst perusing the New Era Newspaper on 20 February 2023 when I saw the second respondent (Erongo Regional Council) had re-advertised the tender that the applicant was notified for the selection award,” said Henry Jongwe, Henimma Investments managing director.

Jongwe said it was unfair to them as they only learned that there had been a request for re-evaluation in March when the tender was re-advertised in February. He said the company was never afforded the opportunity to present its case before the review panel made their decision.

The review panel in their defence noted that they notified the company and a virtual link for the director to attend proceedings was sent to them via email on 20 January.

However, it was later discovered that the link was sent to an incorrect email address. Thus, the proceedings took place without them.

Omatjete and its surrounding communities have been in the news since 2016 because of the water shortage crisis. This newspaper has reported instances where the communities have complained about not having access to potable water.

At the time, traditional authorities representing the communities pointed to the failure of the local government for not properly consulting the affected communities before installing boreholes in areas that do not have underground water.

In addition, the slow-paced response to the repairing or rehabilitation of broken or malfunctioning boreholes has also contributed to the frustrations of the community.

The community leaders also pointed to the local government’s failure to engage them when creating plans to dig for boreholes in areas that are not familiar to local government.

They have said the NamWater trucks are often reported broken and unable to reach the areas that are in dire need of water.