Charging more than Mercedes
“they are in separate categories”.
Henderson says “this is not allowed as it amounts to creating a potential for ‘double dipping’. They get twice the opportunity for work allocated on a rotational basis.”
visited supplier workshops, posing as a prospective client, and took pictures. Looking at them, Rusty, familiar with some of them, says a number of them do not meet requirements, notably in terms of size. Among those is VB.
The municipality’s fleet manager Hlalanathi Sishi, who was on the panel that inspected VB’s premises, insists VB meets requirements “for this specific tender”.
The money is in trucks
Rusty says because there is a bigger mark-up on truck parts, “the profit is much higher than a car, providing financial incentive for unqualified suppliers to get their hands on the tender”.
Mercedes-Benz service centres charge R82,000 to service the Mercedes Axor truck. Ekurhuleni’s service providers can charge up to R96,000. For a Ford Ranger, as used by Ekurhuleni metro police, the manufacturer charges R6,000, while the city’s suppliers can invoice a maximum of R22,000 – which
Henderson describes as price-fixing.
The dramatic 10-times difference between manufacturer and municipal supplier quotes to fix a Toyota Hino 500 seem to confirm that.
Sishi responded that “prices for repairs are not inflated ... [but are] market related”.
Invoices in DM168’s possession show VB invoicing for work completed before finishing the job, even before knowing which parts would be used. The signatures of Ekurhuleni Benoni workshop manager Lot Kekana and his boss, transport and fleet management HOD Landela Mahlati, both of which are required for spending over R50,000, are on an invoice for R57,000 worth of repairs to a Nissan Compactor in May 2021, although the vehicle was only fixed seven months later.
Asked if she had signed off on a vehicle repair invoice prematurely, Mahlati said, via a spokesperson: “No”. It was the only reply from Mahlati to a list of questions.
An official in the department confirms that the truck was still disabled in December of that year and only returned to service in January 2022, seven months after VB was paid.
VB’s Mdluli did not explain how his firm was given a Nissan Compactor to fix when his premises did not meet requirements at time of tendering.
A legal letter sent to the city’s top management on 31 October 2021 refers to some “purported successful tenderers and unsuccessful tenderers” being approached by City Council employees indicating that “if a portion of their future business earnings from the City’s work would be shared, the award and flow of work under the Tender would be guaranteed. In the circumstances, the Tender appears to have been corrupted.”
Spanner explains that ousted former suppliers used to have five or six employees, many of whom have now lost their jobs because the workshop owners have not been paid for about a year’s work and now have a lot less work after being wrongfully disqualified.