R37bn blown on contract deviations

MPS critical of ‘scanty’ Treasury report

THE Treasury’s Chief Procurement Office has reported to parliament that government departments and state-owned companies had requested deviations from normal procurement processes amounting to more than R37-billion in the 2016-17 financial year.

The report, presented by acting Chief Procurement Officer Willie Mathebula, has also shown that power utility Eskom accounted for the largest chunk of requests to depart from regular procurement processes‚ accounting for deviations to the tune of R31.3-billion.

He said departments and SOEs often asked to depart from normal procurement processes, such as open tendering, at the last minute due to poor planning‚ lack of skills and capacity and weak contract management, among other reasons.

Included in the Treasury’s top 10 public entities with deviations with the biggest monetary value are the SA Revenue Service (R1.2-billion)‚ the department of rural development (R648-million)‚ the SA Social Security Agency (R405-million) and Transnet with R380-million.

But the MPs, whether from the ANC or rival parties, were unimpressed when Mathebula failed to provide the finer details of the deviation requests‚ saying his report did not indicate whether fraud and corruption were at the heart of the problem.

“It would have been useful to be given the timeframes‚ the reasons for deviations . . . we have no sense whether these deviations were justifiable‚ whether they were approved or not‚ on what basis were they approved . . . it’s a very scanty presentation‚” said ANC MP Derek Hanekom.

He suggested that corrupt officials often used deviation requests when they wanted to benefit or award government contracts to businessmen closely connected to them.

Mathebula angered DA MP David Maynier when he said it would have been a “mammoth task” for his office to provide a much more detailed report on the deviations.

“It’s quite a lot of information. For us to have brought stacks of information‚ individual transactions‚ would have been a mammoth task‚” said Mathebula.

Maynier dismissed Mathebula’s assertion as “nonsense”. — DDC