City Press<\/a><\/strong>,\u00a0the proposed changes to the office of the chief procurement officer (CPO) are being mooted without consultation with Treasury director-general (DG) Dondo Mogajane.<\/p>\nThis follows earlier reports that finance minister Malusi Gigaba and his deputy Sfiso Buthelezi are establishing a parallel administration in the critical government department.<\/p>\n
City Press further reported that Gigaba and Buthelezi bypassed Mogajane and did not consult senior Treasury officials when making critical decisions, including last week\u2019s decision to hand national carrier SAA a R3.2 billion bailout.<\/p>\n
Treasury spokesperson Mayihlome Tshwete denied the allegations, and said the ministry\u2019s staff report to Gigaba and civil servants to Mogajane.<\/p>\n
However minutes of a meeting chaired two weeks ago\u00a0by acting CPO Willie Mathebula, Gigaba, and\u00a0Buthelezi show that\u00a0Mathebula had neither informed Mogajane, nor obtained his permission to proceed with the proposed restructuring of his office.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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,\u201d the minutes read.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI 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.<\/p>\n
“Of course, they also copy Mogajane, but administrative issues should be directed straight to the director-general,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The minutes indicate that a meeting will be arranged to bring Mogajane up to speed with the changes and for him to guide the \u201cexpected direction\u201d – by which point the process would already have begun.<\/p>\n
Proposed changes<\/strong><\/p>\nAt the meeting Mathebula chaired, it was discussed what he had deliberated with Gigaba and Buthelezi, including:<\/p>\n
\n- A \u201crelook\u201d at the powers of his office\u2019s governance monitoring and compliance (GMC) unit to approve or decline requests from government departments to deviate from tender laws and to extend tenders;<\/li>\n
- That the office of the CPO operated \u201clike a dictator, and not an enabler\u201d;<\/li>\n
- That procurement was not aligned to transformation and that the office did not support state-owned companies;<\/li>\n
- That the office didn\u2019t consult other government departments and companies and ignored their procurement officials;<\/li>\n
- 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;<\/li>\n
- 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<\/li>\n
- That government\u2019s policy to pay service providers within 30 days needed to be reviewed to stop companies from closing down due to non-payment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The minutes also reveal a proposal to appoint an independent company to assess the CPO office\u2019s work.<\/p>\n
An official with knowledge of the meeting said the decision was made after officials resisted withdrawing the governance monitoring and compliance unit\u2019s powers to decide if departments\u2019 requests for tender deviations and extensions were justified.<\/p>\n
The official said Mathebula argued that departments should be left to decide for themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cFurther discussions to follow on whether to put together a committee for collective approvals rather than only the GMC making decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n
The official said government wanted to curtail the GMC\u2019s 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\u2019s permission.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnder the current environment, they can\u2019t do those projects without deviating from tender processes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nRead:\u00a0Vodacom shares slump on probe of Treasury contract<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following a series of long fought battles, reports indicate that President Zuma has found a way to get money out of Treasury with ease.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":52621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[5018,26],"class_list":["post-203586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-city-press","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203586"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":203604,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203586\/revisions\/203604"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}