SOMETHING drastic needs to be done to avert a tender war from flaring out of control.
The government's procurement system is under attack from all angles.
Government officials who sit on tender committees have found loopholes to corrupt it. They break procurement rules and regulations whenever they want to boost their pockets.
Politicians will use every opportunity to influence tender adjudication outcomes.
Opportunistic and incompetent businesspeople have found easy ways to grease the palms of adjudicators.
The impact of all this is that billions of rands in taxpayers' money is going to waste on a daily basis, all under the false pretext that it's meant to buy much-needed goods and services such as medical supplies and textbooks.
Public Protector Thuli Madonsela is running out of cash and capacity to investigate some of the tender irregularities reported to her.
The auditor-general's audit reports on the government's supply chain read almost the same every year. You could even bet the A-G merely changes the date on the cover of each report.
As if this is not enough, Sowetan has uncovered a new tender scam. Fraudsters - probably in collusion with government officials - are now pouncing on unsuspecting businesspeople whose companies are registered on the supplier database of government departments.
The fraudsters would claim to be an officials from a particular department. They would fake a tender worth a certain amounts before luring an unsuspecting person to the deal. The businessperson would be told to purchase whatever the fraudsters believe at the time would make them richer. But the point of delivery of the goods would not be a government department.
The businessperson would, in the end, be hijacked and robbed of his goods.
That's what happened to Nceba Luzipho. a Gauteng businessman who was made to believe that he had won atender to supply R400,000 worth of iPads and iPhones - only to be hijacked later when he went to deliver the goods, supposedly to the Department of Water Affairs.
Fortunately for Lusipho he escaped after realising he had received the wrong tender phone call.
Tenders are also associated with political killings. ANC comrades are increasingly at each others' throats over who gets what lucrative tenders.
If the situation is allowed to continue, the whole state will be a site for tender war.
Beware of a tender war
SOMETHING drastic needs to be done to avert a tender war from flaring out of control.
The government's procurement system is under attack from all angles.
Government officials who sit on tender committees have found loopholes to corrupt it. They break procurement rules and regulations whenever they want to boost their pockets.
Politicians will use every opportunity to influence tender adjudication outcomes.
Opportunistic and incompetent businesspeople have found easy ways to grease the palms of adjudicators.
The impact of all this is that billions of rands in taxpayers' money is going to waste on a daily basis, all under the false pretext that it's meant to buy much-needed goods and services such as medical supplies and textbooks.
Public Protector Thuli Madonsela is running out of cash and capacity to investigate some of the tender irregularities reported to her.
The auditor-general's audit reports on the government's supply chain read almost the same every year. You could even bet the A-G merely changes the date on the cover of each report.
As if this is not enough, Sowetan has uncovered a new tender scam. Fraudsters - probably in collusion with government officials - are now pouncing on unsuspecting businesspeople whose companies are registered on the supplier database of government departments.
The fraudsters would claim to be an officials from a particular department. They would fake a tender worth a certain amounts before luring an unsuspecting person to the deal. The businessperson would be told to purchase whatever the fraudsters believe at the time would make them richer. But the point of delivery of the goods would not be a government department.
The businessperson would, in the end, be hijacked and robbed of his goods.
That's what happened to Nceba Luzipho. a Gauteng businessman who was made to believe that he had won atender to supply R400,000 worth of iPads and iPhones - only to be hijacked later when he went to deliver the goods, supposedly to the Department of Water Affairs.
Fortunately for Lusipho he escaped after realising he had received the wrong tender phone call.
Tenders are also associated with political killings. ANC comrades are increasingly at each others' throats over who gets what lucrative tenders.
If the situation is allowed to continue, the whole state will be a site for tender war.
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