SAPS accused of flouting tender bids
'Unlawful evaluation criteria' introduced to sideline firm
A Johannesburg company has hauled the SA Police Service (SAPS) before court over how it evaluated bids for a R525m wellness screening and temporary incapacity management tender.
Carewell Emergencies Ambulances filed a 533-page action in the high court in Pretoria over a week ago on an urgent basis for the awarding of the tender, which will also cover the assessment of injuries sustained by cops on duty.
The company is accusing the SAPS of introducing unlawful deviations and additional evaluation criteria when evaluating bids for the three-year contract worth R175m a year.
The company, which is based in Midrand, Johannesburg, has approached the court on an urgent basis in an effort to interdict the awarding of the tender to another company, Metropolitan Health, pending a review application it has lodged.
In a founding affidavit, Carewell director Phuti Cedric Mashala accused SAPS of deviating from the normal tender evaluating processes in an effort to ensure current holder of the contract, Metropolitan Health, gets an undue advantage to retain the three-year tender once again.
Mashala argued in his affidavit that a “so-called due diligence” questionnaire was introduced in August and was allegedly being used to sideline Carewell from getting the contract, which it was among the bidders for.
He said on August 13, five months after bidding for the tender, Carewell received a letter from SAPS’s divisional manager for supply chain informing it that its bid was being evaluated and that it was found to be compliant with all conditions of the bid.
Mashala said the letter informed it that a “due diligence” needed to be conducted on August 17 at 4pm and he never heard from the SAPS official again until in October he saw on the police’s website that the tender had been awarded.
After numerous phone calls to the office of the divisional commissioner: supply chain management, in the first week of November 2020 I was verbally informed that the applicant’s [Carewell] bid was invalidated because SAPS felt that the due diligence investigation revealed that SAPS’s expectations of the applicant’s ability to implement the tender would not be met,” Mashala stated.
“By necessary implication the applicant’s bid was not further assessed in accordance with the bid criteria.”
Mashala said despite being given a verbal explanation, noone was prepared to furnish him with the explanation and Carewell was never notified of the SAPS decision on the tender to allow the company an opportunity to take it on review should it wish to.
“It will be argued [on review] that the issues in the due diligence report import additional criteria into the tender document which SAPS did not reserve for itself when it formulated the invitation to bid,” Mashala argued.
SAPS spokesperson Col Athlenda Mathe said: “The SAPS has not received the summons thus far; it will be premature for us to respond at this stage.”