North West Premier, Mme Thandi Modise, views the article published in the Mail & Guardian of Friday, 7 October 2011, under the heading “Premier at centre of tender row” not only as malicious but also defamatory and has vowed that she will not take the unjustifiable attack on her person and integrity lying down.
Premier Modise is weighing options of either taking legal action against the paper or referring the matter to the Press Ombudsman.
In a rather surprising act of journalism, the article attempts to draw linkage between the decision of the North West Provincial Treasury to put the Department of Public Works, Roads and Transport under sanction and the awarding of road rehabilitation contract PWRT 71/11 to Down Touch Investments (Pty) Ltd.
Though the newspaper was provided with facts as to why the Premier placed the acting Head of the Department of Public Works, Roads and Transport, Mr Sandile Mbanjwa, on precautionary suspension on Thursday, 6 October 2011, its article is based on statements purportedly made by faceless critics while ignoring the rationale behind the decision to re-evaluate the tender.
A scrutiny of court documents which are in the public domain would have served to convince the paper that had the Premier not been cited as the first respondent in the matter, she wouldn’t have summoned then Acting Head of Department and his team to be briefed on processes and procedures they had followed towards appointment of the contractors awarded the tender as she has no vested interest in the awarding of tenders by any government department.
For the record, we wish to categorically state that at no point did the Premier ignore or express the view that she did not trust the opinion of the Senior Counsel (SC) as alleged in the article. As a matter of fact, at no point did the SC express an opinion that the department has done nothing wrong.
There are visible signs of wrongdoing in the awarding of the contract and any government leader who cares about clean governance would act to investigate such matter particularly that there is a pending court application to which the Premier has been cited as first respondent.
A balanced and unbiased article would not have ignored a critical part of the response provided to Mail & Guardian that reads:
“Let us dispel as just fallacy that the Premier prefers Globul Roads for the award. In fact, on close scrutiny of the tender advertisement, Globul Roads, Down Touch and other bidders stand to be disqualified for contravening clearly set rules. These companies applied for both portions A and B of tender PWRT 71/11 when the department had stipulated that doing so will lead to disqualification on both bids. That is one of the reasons that justifies the investigation of the tender.”
The benefit of investigating the matter is two-fold, firstly, to ensure that the award complies with relevant prescripts such as the Public Finance Management Act; and, secondly, in the event of wrongdoing, corrective measures can be put in place.
The placing of Public Works, Roads and Transport under sanctions is in no way related to the awarding of the tender in question. It is a matter of public knowledge that the department was previously placed under sanctions during the 2009/2010 financial year after it had spent its entire budget for its roads capital projects in the first quarter.
The placing of the department sanction and the recent announced re-evaluation of the awarded tender seem to have generated anxiety and panic among some senior officials and in some quarters to the extent that those who fear that the net is closing in on them, have resorted to desperate pre-emptive strategies to try to unnerve and intimidate the Premier into inaction.
Those involved are in for a rude shock as they have underestimated Premier Modise’s resolve to uproot greed and corruption in her administration. In fact, pre-emptive strategies employed seem to suggest that the contract could be just but the tip of the iceberg.
Modise is on record as saying: “As long as the citizens and public servants within the North West Provincial Administration who abhor dishonesty, even if they were minute, we would not be deterred from conducting similar investigations when there are grounds for doing so, including taking disciplinary steps where necessary. We owe it to people of our province to take a stance and decisive action to stop the rot and the plundering of state resources.”
