BCM advised to call off R3m rural housing probe

A PROBE into a R3-million rural housing tender in Potsdam has been called off after Buffalo City Metro city manager Andile Sihlahla said the exercise “might yield no results at all”.

This comes after the council resolved in March that an investigating officer should be appointed to probe how BCM officials made a costly “human error” in a tender advertisement for the project in 2013.

The error will cost BCM more than R500 000 after the Potsdam housing project tender was advertised and awarded as a rural project instead of an urban one.

Aurecon South Africa Consulting Engineers was awarded the tender in 2014 for the design and project management of the Potsdam North Kanana rural housing project near Mdantsane.

Although the preliminary design work has been completed Aurecon SA refused to continue with the work until an agreement to increase the budget was reached.

Initially, the metro was set to spend R3.3-million for the comp work. However, because of the “human error” an increase of R613 186 was demanded from BCM.

The increase was for the specification upgrading from rural to urban standard of services.

In a report to council, Sihlahla said due to the number of officials involved in the supply chain processes the investigation needed a thorough legal process that requires more time to conclude.

He said “some officials who might be implicated no longer work the institution”.

Now instead of doing the investigation the metro will serve the remaining implicated official with a “written warning”.

“The sequence of events has uncovered that at least two key officials that were involved in the process are no longer working for the council.

“One is deceased through a tragedy that took place in April 2014 and the other who approved the specification before submission to the bid specification resigned from the institution in 2016,” said Sihlahla.

The accounting officer said the amount would not be regarded as wasteful expenditure as there will be value created to the benefit of the council.

Sihlahla said it was in the interest of the administrations’ time and excessive cost involved in the process and council should set aside the earlier resolution for the appointment of the investigating officer.

Although ANC councillors supported the call off of the investigation in the last council meeting, the DA’s councillor Geoff Walton expressed unhappiness about the unanswered questions concerning the blunder.

“The council needs to know how this error happened and who is responsible for it,” Walton said. “The council still has a right to be informed [even though some of those responsible for the error are no longer in the employ of the city].”

Walton asked if there were any legal implications due to the error made, to which Sihlahla said no.

“The project manager that first initiated the process through drafting of the specification is to be warned of the possible reoccurrence of similar incident and that punitive actions will be taken in future,” Sihlahla said.

Yesterday BCM spokesman Samkelo Ngwenya declined to give details of the disciplinary process saying it was confidential. “We are following the directives as per the necessary resolutions to continue with the project. It is currently at bid adjudication level,” he said.

“It would be difficult to put in time frames except to assure our people from that area that we are committed to resolving the matter and provide the necessary services,” —