Disgruntled black-owned firms in the City of Tshwane are crying foul over a R70 million tracking system tender, accusing the city of deliberately excluding them from the procurement process through alleged biased bidding requirements.
These concerns regarding the three-year tender for the supply, installation, monitoring and maintenance of a vehicle tracking system were raised by the companies in a letter to mayor Randall Williams.
The mayor’s office has dismissed the allegations.
The letter was submitted anonymously, with the companies saying they fear reprisal should their names be known.
“One is often threatened that they will never be awarded tenders by the city if they dare complain,” they say.
However, the names of the complainants are known by ITWeb.
Prejudiced process
The companies claim the bid, if evaluated and awarded as is, exposes the City of Tshwane to a possible finding of irregular expenditure, as it contravenes its own procurement policy by limiting competition.
At the centre of the dispute is the allegation that it appears as if the bid specifications and requirements were written in a way that benefit the current service provider, C-Track.
The companies say the specification that only allowed bidders that are currently providing a similar service involving a minimum of 4 000 vehicles under one contract is unfair to smaller companies.
“There are only a handful of companies that provide this service to 4 000-plus cars under one contract. It is a way of manipulating the process to make it appear as if the door is wide open; meanwhile, they only want a handful to be able to contest.
“Furthermore, the bid document, on page 37, indicates the city has purchased the tracking units from C-Track. Therefore, the required units must be compatible with C-Track. Again, this limits the number of competitors.
“The above is also in contravention of the City of Tshwane Procurement Policy and Treasury Regulations in that the specification should permit the acceptance of offers for goods which have similar characteristics and which provide performance at least equivalent to those specified.”
In the letter, the displeased group says in terms of the “Constitution of the Republic, it enjoins government departments and state institutions, when procuring goods and services, to do so in accordance with a system which is fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost-effective”.
Furthermore, the companies say the municipality’s procurement policy is contravened because the bid limits a competitive process in a way that is unfair to other possible service providers.
“It does not comply with the following principles: Fairness: service providers must be treated fairly. The municipality must not impose unnecessary burdens or constraints on service providers or potential service providers.
“Competitiveness: procurement must be carried out by competition unless there are convincing reasons to the contrary.”
Financial prudence
Responding to the allegations, Jordan Griffiths, the mayor’s acting chief of staff, says there is no contravention against the constitution; if anything, the specification protects the city from the risk of fruitless expenditure.
He says the city currently has C-Track tracking units installed in over 3 500 vehicles and has owned these tracking units for years.
He explains: “The specification rightly discloses the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) for these units because the bidder needs to know the units that are in that environment in order to confirm capability to operate these units. The specification therefore creates no bias towards C-Track.
“There are no tracking units in the market that are not owned by an OEM; the fact that the city owns C-Track units does not create any bias, and it could have been any OEM. It is not creating a bias, and when you need a service provider to operate an OEM product to have confirmation to work on that product, there is no bias in requesting that the service provider must be certified by an OEM for the purposes of warranty, certification of quality of work, ability to operate a product.”
According to Griffiths: “The tender is not in contravention with policies and regulations. We believe the city has every right to state the units that it has in the environment and not ‘blindside the market’, and the successful service provider must be able to operate on those units. Not stating such in the spec will expose the city and the successful service provider to risk should there be a misfit between the capabilities of a successful service provider and the units that the city has.”
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