E-toll tender up for grabs
MANDATE: OPERATIONS AND MAINTENANCE
Existing staff will be protected should different company get contract.
three because the investment summit delayed the Cabinet meeting by a week.
She said Cabinet did not include e-tolls in its discussions at last week’s meeting, but “my understanding is that it will be included at some point before the end of the year”.
Sanral spokesperson Vusi Mona confirmed the current contract, awarded to ETC, which is owned by Austria-based firm Kapsch, had not been extended again and that Sanral issued a tender on August 19.
The tender, as advertised, is for the operations and maintenance of an openroad tolling system in Gauteng, a national transaction clearing house and a violations processing centre.
ETC’s contract was extended last year for a further year, until Monday next week.
Mona said Sanral was in the tender evaluation phase in accordance with the tender programme, according to which a new contractor must be appointed to commence work by next Tuesday.
He said the contract was for a period of 72 months, with an option to extend for another 24 months.
Commenting on what will happen to ETC employees if another company is awarded the contract, Mona said the bulk of the ETC staff were protected in terms of Section 197 of the Labour Relations Act.
Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) chief executive Wayne Duvenage is interested to know how many companies tendered.
“We are very intrigued by who wanted to tender for a failed scheme. We can’t see anyone tendering, apart from ETC.”
Duvenage said Outa was also interested in what the tender was for, the amounts that were tendered and by whom.
“Hopefully, Sanral is a lot more transparent this time around with regard to all the tender processes and information and the contract, because it was all subject to such secrecy last time,” he said.