DURBAN - THE KwaZulu-Natal Department of Social Development (DSD) revealed that it had initiated disciplinary action against officials who were found to be in the wrong in the procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE) during the Covid-19 pandemic.
DSD spokesperson Mhlaba Memela said the department had established a new supply chain system (SCM) that would prevent this from happening again.
“The department has instituted disciplinary actions against officials who were found to have contravened SCM … policies. It has also employed a permanent supply chain management director – no longer on an acting basis.
“The department is benchmarking PPE prices to Annexure A of the National Treasury instruction note, which gives the price list of essential PPE, and has issued a circular to departmental districts for them to adhere to the instruction note. The department has developed an SCM forum where all practitioners meet to deliberate on all SCM processes,” Memela said.
This comes after the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) said it had referred R24 million worth of PPE contracts the KZN DSD secured to the Special Tribunal. In a report, the SIU said the department “unlawfully and irregularly” issued these contracts.
“The KZN Department of Social Development unlawfully and irregularly procured PPE from the service providers. The SIU issued an application to set aside PPE contracts pursuant to an unlawful procurement process and to claim consequential relief for the recovery of financial losses suffered by the KZN DSD flowing from the PPE contracts,” said the report.
The SIU revealed this during its progress report update to Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts.
The SIU report outlined all the investigations the unit was currently pursuing, in relation to procurement processes during the national state of disaster.
The head of the SIU Andy Mothibi said senior provincial leaders in government deviated from normal processes after President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the emergency plan in response to the pandemic.
“It appears that persons in positions of authority within provincial government believed that the declaration of a ‘national state of disaster’ meant that all procurement is automatically now conducted on an ‘emergency’ basis, and without compliance with any of the normal prescripts regulating public sector procurement, but without realising that even ‘emergency’ procurement must still be conducted in accordance with certain minimum prescripts to ensure (as far as possible) that such processes remain fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost-effective as prescribed by section 217(1) of the Constitution (eg to motivate) to the accounting officer or authority of the state institution concerned why it is wholly or partially impractical to invite competitive bids, and have that accounting officer/authority record the reason for such impracticality and approve a SCM deviation in terms of Regulation 16A6.4 of the Treasury regulations, which must be reported to the relevant treasury and the AGSA, etc,” Mothibi said in the report.
Meanwhile, the unit revealed that allegations concerning 91 catering contracts were levelled against the eThekwini Municipality, and it concluded that about 90% of them were within acceptable rates.
“The SIU received an allegation that the municipality had provided catering for the homeless between March 2020 and July 2020. The contracts were awarded without complying with the National Treasury benchmark rates which resulted in the municipality paying more for the services than they should have; 91 contracts to the value of R32 087 533 have been finalised. The SIU investigation found 82 of the contracts awarded were within the National Treasury rates,” the report said.
The SIU also reported that it had made referrals to the SA Health Products Regulatory Authority after discovering that seven service providers in eThekwini were not registered as suppliers of medical devices.
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