Website to solve late payment issues
E Cape treasury IT professionals develop useful online service
Service providers, have you been paid? The time for long waiting periods for payments for Eastern Cape service providers may be over.
Two young IT professionals in the provincial treasury department have devised a website called HIBP, an abbreviation for ‘Have I been Paid?”
It will enable both the government and the small, medium and micro enterprises awaiting payment from the government to track the progress of payments, what the hold-up may be, if any; and the officials responsible.
This is a welcome development as many SMMEs have, over the years, complained of not being paid within the stipulated 30 days after submitting invoices for work done.
This sometimes led to SMMEs not being able to pay workers and suppliers.
Provincial treasury assistant director programmer Mbasa Mabi, 32, and assistant director webmaster Fezile Moya, 31, are behind the website.
Mabi, who worked on the back-end of the website, said: “We have pulled government data from the procurement system. The information that is there is exactly what it is here. What the suppliers will see on this website is exactly what is on the procurement system.”
The development and registration of the website and its domain name are done, Mabi and Moya said.
They said they were only waiting for the launch date, which will be announced later this month.
Moya, who developed the front-end of the site, said the whole thing took three months to build. “We were briefed by the provincial government that the website had to be accessible and load fast, and that it had to perform.”
The duo said it was important to note that the project was done in-house.
Mabi said: “It was developed in-house by government for government. This goes to show that we have the skill set within government to push out more of these applications, instead of approaching service providers to do these things.”
Provincial treasury spokesperson Phumelele Godongwana said the website was being piloted by the provincial treasury, the sport, recreation, arts & culture department and the health departments as well.
He said the website has five tracking stages: from confirmation that the relevant department has received a supplier’s invoice; service has been rendered; supplier’s invoice captured; and approval and disbursement.
Godongwana said: “There was an instruction for treasury to come up with something like this and we decided to use inhouse skill to develop this application. There was no extra money paid for the development of the application.”
Godongwana said treasury would begin an awareness campaign around the website at the beginning of next month.
The first-of-its-kind project in SA has provincial government backing. Premier Oscar Mabuyane commended the duo’s design.
His spokesperson, Mvusiwekhaya Sicwetsha, said: “When the premier was MEC for finance, he placed emphasis on finding ways to pay service providers within 30 days.”