HOSTAGE DRAMA AS ANGRY BLACK BUSINESS OWNERS STORM MUNICIPAL BUILDING:
Angry black business owners storm municipal building, lock gates
ABOUT 500 Nelson Mandela Bay black business owners held deputy mayor Chippa Ngcolomba and municipal staff hostage yesterday, demanding that tenders for work on the bus system and other infrastructure projects be awarded immediately.
The group was also livid that they were not consulted before council changed its tender policy, which will now give black-owned SMMEs a smaller share of contracts awarded to big companies.
The policy previously dictated that at least 30% of all municipal contracts be sub-contracted to black-owned companies. At an infrastructure and engineering portfolio committee earlier this week, acting executive director Walter Shaidi explained that the quota had now been dropped to 25%.
However, municipal spokesman Kupido Baron said the quota did not apply to exempted micro-enterprise companies that had an annual turnover of R5-million or less.
Council passed the new supply chain management policy last month.
The fed-up members of the newly formed Nelson Mandela Metro Proactive Business Front – which includes Nafcoc, Black Business Forum, Metro SMMEs, Nelson Mandela Bay Construction Forum, the Black SMME Forum and the Northern Areas Forum – stormed the municipality’s Nonizi Luzipho building (Pleinhuis) and locked both entrance gates to the building.
They demanded that Ngcolomba intervene in the delays in awarding tenders.
Police were called to monitor the situation and removed the locks at about noon.
Spokesman for the group Litemba Singapi said: “We were promised that the letters of awards for the IPTS [integrated public transport system] tenders and other infrastructurerelated tenders would be awarded today [Friday].
“But suddenly they’re all on leave and others are sick, but we are sick of these excuses.
“The deputy mayor [Ngcolomba] is meeting with the officials from infrastructure to find out why the letters of award have not been given out.”
By 2pm, the successful sub-contractors were given their letters of award by the main contractors.
The news comes as Shaidi complained on Thursday that there were seven major infrastructure tenders that had been delayed because the tender committees did not sit often enough. He also said three IPTS-related tenders, worth R100-million, could not be advertised because information about the specifications of the tender had been leaked.
At an infrastructure and engineering portfolio committee meeting on Thursday, Shaidi said his department would hold a meeting with all black-owned SMMEs to explain how the revised tender policy would work.
In his report to councillors he wrote that the municipality had battled to meet the 30% target of work to be given to black-owned SMMEs because many did not meet the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) standards to be able to do the work.
“Training remains a challenge because the SMMEs find if difficult to price tender documents. They need to be trained on financial management as some of them misuse money,” Shaidi wrote.
The municipality’s economic development department is working with the Coega CDC to assist in training SMMEs.
Shaidi said out of the 33 road, stormwater and IPTS projects which were under construction in the metro – valued at R427-million – SMMEs were getting work worth R132-million.
But this, according to Nafcoc regional president Mnyamezeli Dyala, was not nearly enough to enrich black business owners.
Baron explained that the revised policy was in line with the sub-contracting provision in the BBBEE regulations of 2011.
He said the municipality was still working on a roll-out plan to implement the revised policy.