SMMEs demand contracts

Small business group wants part of massive new project

AGROUP of about 20 small business owners and contractors targeted a privately-owned automotive retail business in Port Elizabeth yesterday.

They are demanding that the company give the SMMEs at least 30% of the construction and other work being undertaken at a massive new dealership facility being built in the west of the city.

The SMME owners, who form part of a larger group of small business owners in Nelson Mandela Bay who have been jostling for municipal contract work though protests and other actions for more than a year, staged a protest outside Algoa Toyota in Cape Road, Newton Park.

Police were monitoring the situation from before midday.

Unitrans-owned Algoa Toyota, which operates two dealerships in Port Elizabeth, is constructing a massive new flagship facility in Willow Road, Fairview.

The facility, which is expected to be completed in about November next year, will cost between R60-million and R80-million and will incorporate both of the company’s current Toyota dealerships.

Work on the site began three to four weeks ago.

Speaking outside the dealership yesterday, the protesters, some of whom were agitated that their demands were not being met, said they had approached management at the dealership about four months ago to engage with the company on securing contracts for work on the 24 000m² construction site.

Acknowledging that the construction project was not a government initiative, they said they believed the company was obliged to award them contract work “because it is government policy” and because the company must award the work “as part of its social responsibility”.

“We buy their cars, we buy their taxis and they give us nothing,” one SMME owner said.

Their spokesman, Patrick Matomela, said the group of SMMEs, mostly from Kwazakhele, comprised about 150 different contractors who wanted work ranging from construction and paving to electrical work.

He said all the SMMEs had the required capacities to fulfil any contract they were awarded.

“They [management] said they would engage with us so that we could get work on that site,” he said.

“Now they have started and we have not been given any work. We will continue to protest.”

Algoa Toyota sales manager Simon Ward, who explained that a construction company, which contracts its own SMME service providers, had already been appointed and was busy on the site, said: “We were quite surprised when the group arrived.

“No commitments were made to them.

“We are monitoring the protest situation.”