Official suspended over illegal tender
A SENIOR Department of Economic Development official has been suspended over an alleged involvement in the illegal issuing of a broadband tender worth R1.3 billion in 2015.
The City of Joburg has withheld the identity of the official, citing legal reasons.
Joburg mayor Her man Mashaba said the official was suspended pending a disciplinary hearing into allegations of misconduct relating to contracts and payments linked to the Johannesburg Broadband Network Project made by the Metropolitan Trading Company (MTC).
“The official has already been implicated in an independent forensic investigation which recommends corrective action be taken,” said Mashaba.
“In addition, he is seen to be deliberately frustrating an investigation into the city’s seemingly inexplicable R1.3bn acquisition of the 900km broadband network in 2015.”
The acquisition was done through the MTC, a municipal-owned entity, which possessed no viable business plan nor had requisite capacity to run an operation of this size.
Mashaba said the official had refused to allow investigators access to a number of devices believed to contain crucial information relating to the probe.
“The city has obtained a court order to create mirror images of the official’s devices to preserve all information on the devices to ensure that potential key evidence relating to this investigation is not destroyed.”
The aim was to provide access to broadband services, which would improve the city’s service delivery and realise ICT cost-related savings, among other things. But Mashaba said “despite the astronomical cost, few of these benefits have been realised, necessitating a thorough investigation into the project”. The tender was awarded on December 19, 2008, to a consortium. On July 31, 2014, the council terminated the agreement to operate the network through the MTC.
“On commencing operations on September 30, 2015, the MTC ended the 2015/16 financial year with a R54m net loss. By February, MTC still continued to function with no viable business plan. In his most recent report, the auditor-general also found the performance of MTC could not be assessed because of the lack of a viable business plan from the entity,” said Mashaba.