Metro cancels fuel tender with Masana Petroleum — 10 years later

The Nelson Mandela Bay municipality has cancelled its fuel tender with Masana Petroleum

Solutions.

The city obtained a legal opinion that the “evergreen contract ” which had been awarded numerous times to Masana — often using deviations to supply chain management processes — was irregular. Bay acting COO Anele Qaba confirmed yesterday that the tender had been cancelled three weeks ago, saying the city had to use an emergency procurement process to stop municipal vehicles from running out of fuel. “That process was completed and as the city, we had to follow due supply chain processes which were recommended to our legal department, which had to vet the service level agreement with the new contractor. Supply chain then issued a provisional letter of appointment following which we had to wait 14 days for any objections.

“A company was awarded the contract on a month-tomonth basis pending the outcome of a court process in relation to the awarding of the fuel tender,” Qaba said.

The Herald previously reported that Fleet Sync Caltex

Joint Venture had filed an interdict application with the Port Elizabeth High Court to stop the city from filling up its fleet at some BP petrol stations through the Masana contract.

They wanted the court to declare the awarding of the fuel tender — on a month-tomonth basis — to Masana

Petroleum Solutions unlawful.

Masana Petroleum has had the contract for a decade.

For the past 10 years, the municipality failed to put to tender the R50m contract to supply the city’s vehicle fleet with instead fuel, of relied the normal on deviations competitive bidding process and renewed the contract on a month-to-month basis.

The fuel is used for the metro’s 2,000 vehicles as well as its plant and equipment fleet.

Yesterday, DA councillor

Masixole Zinto said in a statement that services in the metro would grind to a halt due to the municipality’s inability to timeously finalise its contract with a service provider to provide fuel to the municipal fleet.

“Masana’s contract was extended for a six-month period until November 30 of this year, but the metro still has to sign the service level agreement with the new service provider and petrol cards have not even been distributed yet.

“Accordingly, the metro fleet has not been able to fill vehicle fuel tanks since December 1. “This will have a catastrophic impact on the municipality’s ability to attend to electricity and water outages, refuse removal and even on the operation of the metro police,” Zinto said.

However, Qaba said petrol cards were issued by 11am yesterday.

“We ’ ve got a month-tomonth contract which won’t exceed six months.

“Once the legal process is concluded, only then we’ll be able to award a formal contract. “There’s been no instance where trucks did not go out today to collect waste.

“They may have been late but I was there personally when public health and safety and security directorate were issued their petrol cards and took their vehicles,” Qaba said.