MBOMBELA – The provincial Department of Education is re-adjudicating the tenders for the province’s feeding scheme, but no heads have rolled as yet.
The three-year contracts were awarded earlier this year to 17 contractors tasked with providing nutritious food to various schools across the province. However, seven of the losing bidders took the matter to court, and on May 26 the High Court found in their favour, setting aside the awarding of the tenders.
The head of department Ms Mohlasedi Mhlabane was also ordered to re-adjudicate them, since the first process was unfair and deliberately skewed. “The deviations from fair process are symptoms of corruption or malfeasance in the process and the unfair process betoken a deliberately skewed process,” the judge found.
The deadline for complying with the order is Thursday and the MEC for education, Ms Reginah Mhaule, said yesterday the process would be completed in time. “We are complying with the court order. We are re-adjudicating the tenders. We have started with the process.”
The court also found that the conduct of the officials involved in the adjudication of the bid process is “abhorrent, shocking and a far cry from the constitutional values enshrined in the constitution.”
Judge Ms Nicoline Janse van Nieuwenhuizen said Mabuza failed to adhere to a court order to dispatch the bid documents of the losing and winning bidders. She said Mhlabane merely endorsed the decisions taken by the bid committees, deferring the adjudication “which in the absence of a delegation is unlawful”. Mhlabane also failed to file the answering affidavit after filing a notice of intention to oppose the relief claimed by the seven applicants.
The premier Mr David Mabuza, Mhaule and Mhlabane were ordered to pay the legal fees on an attorney-and-client scale of the losing bidders. Mhaule said action would be taken against persons found to have made errors in the process of adjudicating the tenders the first time round, if the department found that officials had caused the scandal.
“We will take no action until June 26,” Mhaule said. “This process will tell us exactly where we went wrong. If it was a flaw by a person, action would be taken. If it is a problem of process, we will address it.”
