Gordhan’s ‘tender cops’ to clamp down on fraud
Special Treasury team will monitor procurement in provinces
THE Treasury has vowed to protect provinces from being bullied into awarding lucrative tenders to powerful individuals. And Kenneth Brown will be its point man.
Brown has been appointed to the new post of chief procurement officer. He is setting up a team that will be posted across South Africa to monitor tenders. He will make sure correct procedures are followed, the work is done and that the government gets value for its money.
Brown told the Sunday Times that provincial treasuries were sometimes bullied into authorising payments for dodgy tenders, a practice that he wants to root out.
“We are going to establish our presence in the provinces so that we monitor the treasuries and see whether they are doing what is expected, but on a realtime basis. We all know our treasuries are being victimised,” he said.
“What my teams will be doing is to make sure that they are on top of what’s happening in all of the procurement activities within the provinces to ensure that when a provincial treasury gets victimised, it has the required protection.”
Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan announced Brown’s appointment in his budget speech in February.
In October last year he told parliament that the government was losing up to R30-billion a year to corruption and tender fraud.
Brown said he was putting in place a team that will monitor massive procurement orders such as the purchase of medicines by health departments, as well as the building of schools, clinics, houses and roads.
The team’s members will cut across national and provincial departments, municipalities and state entities. They will be able to flag the manipulation of tender processes and point out if the government is being shortchanged or overcharged.
The office is also setting up pricing guidelines for the entire public service to root out the practice of overpricing.
“If you buy a loaf of bread in one province, a loaf of bread will
It will root out civil servants doing business with the state
cost you R25. In another province it costs R15. If you buy it in the shop, you can get it for R10. But why is the government paying R15 to R20 for that loaf?” said Brown.
He wants all government officials who handle big tenders to be accredited.
He said his office was planning to design an IT database for the entire procurement arm of the state. It will load the details of all companies bidding for state contracts, their directors, history and whether the entity is tax-compliant.
The database will also help to root out civil servants doing business with the state.
“Why can’t we design a system that interfaces with our Persal [government payroll] system? If you apply for a tender, you have provided us with a list of your directors and their ID numbers.
“The system can tell you this group of people in this company are employees of the state and the system can just disqualify them.”
The database will also expose shoddy contractors.
“What was your track record [in contracting with the state]? Somewhere we need to have something that says this person has done shoddy work so that in future we know you have a history of not delivering. Why should we give you a tender again?”
Brown said his office acknowledged that the state was not good at logistics, hence problems arose, such as the failure to deliver textbooks on time. The state should consider outsourcing such functions.
“Why should the government have dispensing services in hospitals? Why should it own it? Can’t a person go to [pharmaceutical chains] Dis-Chem or Clicks or somewhere and get it?
“We are not good at logistics. Let’s leave the logistics to other people to manage,” he said.