DoE not paying up

Following the misleading article published by the Daily Dispatch, “Blame game as school building stalls”, on September 6 2018, the Coega Development Corporation (CDC) would like to tender a response to the following claims made by the department of education:

Education department spokesperson Loyiso Pulumani confirmed contracting Coega “to be our implementing agent for some of our school building programme, including the R2.6m Thangeni ISS (stet) project”.

“Coega has separately entered into a contract with Simunye. “As a rule and principle, Coega is obligated to monitor and remunerate the contractor for all work done. Only once they have satisfied them selves that the work has been satisfactorily done can they submit claims to the department.”

The CDC’s response is:

The name of the school project we are implementing with Simunye Developers as the appointed contractor is Tongani JSS, and the amount certified and approved by CDC as well as the DoE is R2.45m. We verified and successfully submitted the invoice claims to the DoE, which in turn signed off and confirmed the work had been satisfactorily done as per a formal advice dated 23 August 2018. A payment run for these invoice claims, as well as all other claims, was to have taken place on 24 August 2018, but this did not happen as DoE had no funds. Up to now the payment run has not materialised and despite enquiries to DoE we have not received advice on when the payments will be made.

CDC is only able to pay service providers once funding has been received from the DoE.

– Dr Ayanda Vilakazi, head of marketing, brand and communications,

Coega Development Corporation