Internal audit documents for the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality's street lighting supply and maintenance tender for 2023 revealed deficiencies in the supply chain management process. (Archival photo by Mary Ann Gonzana)
Most roads in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality are in darkness as a result of rigged tenders for the supply and maintenance of street lights across the city.
This comes after the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) announced this week that it had received authorisation from President Cyril Ramaphosa to investigate “allegations of serious maladministration” at the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality, to “recover any financial losses” and to investigate “any unlawful or improper conduct by officials” within the municipality.
The SIU has so far remained tight-lipped about the plans, but internal audit documents into the city's 2023 street lighting supply and maintenance tender revealed flaws in the supply chain management process.
The internal audit flagged two tenders related to street lighting.
The first tender for 2019 (SCM/18-207/C) was for the installation and maintenance of street lights and was awarded to three companies. A preliminary investigation revealed that the city administration did not have sufficient stock for contractors to execute this tender. The report said the city administration was aware of this.
The investigation found that the city government had procured just over R180 million in stock beyond its budget.
Subsequently, in 2020, the civic body also floated a tender, numbered SCM/20-27/S, for the supply of street lights to three other companies. The cost of the second tender has not been confirmed.
But when the inventory obtained through the 2019 tender was counted in 2020, auditors found that some of it was damaged and unusable.
This week, the SIU announced it would specifically investigate the SCM/20-27/S tender and the allegations of fraud and misconduct related to it.
Defender of the People (DOP) councillor Thukela Zmani told GroundUp that he had presented evidence of corruption relating to these tenders to the SAPS earlier this year.
A lack of street lighting and poor maintenance of existing lights makes it dangerous for residents, Zmani said. “Having a city in near total darkness is not only unsafe, it is also a serious problem for economic activity,” he said.
“It's hard to believe how something like this could happen,” Zmani said. He said if you drive around at night or early in the morning, “the whole city is dark,” so it couldn't be vandalism, as city officials are using as an excuse, as reported by Ground Up.
Wasteful spending
According to the 2023 audit report, “The Department of Electricity and Energy initiated and completed the procurement process despite being aware that there were no existing contracts for the supply of materials and that inventory levels of these materials required for the performance of contract SCM/18-207/C were extremely low.”
“This ignorance led to the procurement of materials that were not in stock exceeding budgeted amounts and this expenditure is deemed to be fraudulent and unauthorised,” the report said. The contract was over budget by approximately R24 million.
The report also noted that the investigation failed to verify the installation of the streetlights, as the GPS coordinates of their locations could not be verified, the Ministry of Electricity and Energy officials did not have the necessary equipment to read the GPS coordinates provided by the service provider, and there were no work cards for the locations.
” [Electricity & Energy] The authorities approved the payment to the facility. [Internal Audit] “In some cases, the locations of streetlights that were allegedly installed could not be physically inspected,” the report said.
City officials have yet to respond to our questions sent Wednesday.
This article was first published on GroundUp.