New attempt to “bypass” Treasury on tender laws: report
A number of changes to Treasury could see government departments decide independently whether or not to adhere to strict tender laws.
According to a report by the City Press, the proposed changes to the office of the chief procurement officer (CPO) are being mooted without consultation with Treasury director-general (DG) Dondo Mogajane.
This follows earlier reports that finance minister Malusi Gigaba and his deputy Sfiso Buthelezi are establishing a parallel administration in the critical government department.
City Press further reported that Gigaba and Buthelezi bypassed Mogajane and did not consult senior Treasury officials when making critical decisions, including last week’s decision to hand national carrier SAA a R3.2 billion bailout.
Treasury spokesperson Mayihlome Tshwete denied the allegations, and said the ministry’s staff report to Gigaba and civil servants to Mogajane.
However minutes of a meeting chaired two weeks ago by acting CPO Willie Mathebula, Gigaba, and Buthelezi show that Mathebula had neither informed Mogajane, nor obtained his permission to proceed with the proposed restructuring of his office.
“The acting CPO reported on the following outcomes that arose from the meetings with the minister and the deputy minister. There has been no meeting with the director-general yet,” the minutes read.
A senior government executive close to Treasury said it was unheard of to restructure an office without first informing and obtaining permission from the director-general.
“I know that some government departments now liaise directly with the office of the minister, instead of the director-general. I have seen letters from the standing committee on public accounts addressed directly to the minister.
“Of course, they also copy Mogajane, but administrative issues should be directed straight to the director-general,” he said.
The minutes indicate that a meeting will be arranged to bring Mogajane up to speed with the changes and for him to guide the “expected direction” – by which point the process would already have begun.
Proposed changes
At the meeting Mathebula chaired, it was discussed what he had deliberated with Gigaba and Buthelezi, including:
- A “relook” at the powers of his office’s governance monitoring and compliance (GMC) unit to approve or decline requests from government departments to deviate from tender laws and to extend tenders;
- That the office of the CPO operated “like a dictator, and not an enabler”;
- That procurement was not aligned to transformation and that the office did not support state-owned companies;
- That the office didn’t consult other government departments and companies and ignored their procurement officials;
- That contracts, like that signed with Vodacom and challenged by the Competition Commission this week, were a barrier to economic development and should be reviewed and decentralised;
- That some clauses of the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act, whose focus is black empowerment, were not implementable and posed a barrier to doing business; and
- That government’s policy to pay service providers within 30 days needed to be reviewed to stop companies from closing down due to non-payment.
The minutes also reveal a proposal to appoint an independent company to assess the CPO office’s work.
An official with knowledge of the meeting said the decision was made after officials resisted withdrawing the governance monitoring and compliance unit’s powers to decide if departments’ requests for tender deviations and extensions were justified.
The official said Mathebula argued that departments should be left to decide for themselves.
“Further discussions to follow on whether to put together a committee for collective approvals rather than only the GMC making decisions.”
The official said government wanted to curtail the GMC’s powers to allow departments and entities such as water and sanitation, transport, and Eskom to implement expensive projects and the nuclear deal without having to obtain Treasury’s permission.
“Under the current environment, they can’t do those projects without deviating from tender processes.”
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