NDMA’s E380k sanitisers tender
MB A B A N E – The National Disaster Management Agency ( NDMA) awarded a tender for the supply of sanitisers to a company whose qualifications for the job have raised questions.
Firstly, the company – SVK Investments – is not in the list of approved suppliers that have been included in the database for COVID19 response.
Neither is it on the list of companies that showed interest to be evaluated for purposes of being included in the database. This list of approved suppliers was compiled by the NDMA and the Ministry of Health following the companies having responded to an expression of interest for the provision of COVID19 response requirements.
Those companies that expressed interest had to provide information that included names of directors, the category being applied for, trading licence, Form J, Form C, Tax Certificate, VAT registration, labour certificate, ENPF certificate, police certificate, trade references, EOI signed, company profile and trading licence.
Companies in the approved list are the ones that are requested to provide quotations whenever there is need for the supply of goods and services.
The NDMA has confirmed that SVK I nvestments was not i n any of t he two lists; neither on that of those who expressed interest nor that of approved suppliers. SVK Investments was awarded the tender to supply 400 units of 25 litre sanitisers at a cost of E380 000 ( E950 per 25 litre).
Phesheya Dlamini, who is NDMA’s Procurement Officer, claimed that SVK Investments and other companies, did express interest to be included in the database of approved suppliers but this was done after the deadline had passed. “There are many suppliers who had written to us after the close of the expression of interest in August, asking the CEO that they be included in the NDMA database, so we never threw away these requests but put them aside,” he said.
Dlamini admitted that the tender that was given to SVK was for COVID19 requirements and that suppliers were drawn from the approved list.
He said when they developed the list they informed the suppliers that the database would not run forever ‘ but would run until the end of the declaration or until the end of the government financial year ( end of March).
Even though the COVID19 declaration has not ended, Dlamini said when the financial year ended, there came the need for the supply of the 400 sanitisers and they decided to consider only the companies who had been put aside after they filed their expressions of interest after the deadline.
“At the end of March we then decided to not only focus on the suppliers in our database because our target had reached end of financial year, which is why we will issue a new expression of interest inviting new applications. There is then the period between the end of the financial year and the issuing of the new expression, which is a window period. When the window period came, we then looked at these companies who had expressed their interests to supply and looked whether they had all the necessary qualifications such as trading licence and tax compliance certificates and then decided to give them a chance to tender,” Dlamini stated.
The price was much higher than that which the previous supplier, who is in the approved list of suppliers, quoted.”
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Asked why they did not go to the list of approved suppliers, he said they were trying to avoid a situation whereby only the same companies were being given business opportunities. “It would be unfair because the same companies would have won again. That’s why we decided to do this one differently, because we don’t normally have funding for the period between April and May so that is why we went to the other list, otherwise we had told ourselves that we would wait for the tendering process to reopen and include them ( companies not in approved list) there properly,” Dlamini further explained.
He claimed that all the companies that were put aside, including SVK Investments, were included in the NDMA database, which is not the one for the COVID19 response. “The NDMA database of suppliers, what must be clear, is that it consists of suppliers who expressed their interests after we had closed the process and we decided not to discard them but to include them in the database,” he said.
This NDMA database of suppliers, he said, was not made public by being availed on the agency’s website as is the case with the approved suppliers for the COVID19 response.
SVK SINGS DIFFERENT TUNE
Dlamini’s response did not corroborate that of SVK Investments Director Sandile Kunene, who told the Times
SUNDAY that his company had expressed interest within the stipulated deadline and, therefore, was supposed to be on the list. While Dlamini indicated that the company made a single expression of interest, Kunene said they filed it on two occasions. “Talk to Phesheya, I am sure he got our expression. They even responded that they had our expression,” he said.
When told of the NDMA’s response, he wondered how this could be. The second question raised was with regard to the price at which NDMA bought the sanitisers from SVK Investments.
The price was much higher than that which the previous supplier, who is in the approved list of suppliers, quoted.
Between September and October