Gauteng Health Department awash with corruption
Winning bidder charged much more and had poorer technical score
A SENIOR Gauteng Health Department official, recently unmasked for abusing a government housing subsidy, is at the centre of a multi-million-rand tender scandal.
Patrick Maduna was exposed earlier this year for paying a meagre R1,000 a month rent for a R1.7-million government-subsidised house in Kompas Crescent, Quellerina, Roodepoort, to which he is not entitled. The market-related rent would be about R8,000 a month.
Now he faces allegations that he ran roughshod over tender processes to ensure that a bidder, with whom he enjoyed a “personal relationship”, scored a R48-million tender to supply ultra-violet irradiation units, to control the spread of bacteria, to 12 Gauteng hospitals.
This is despite the winning bidder, African Ultra Violet Suppliers, putting in a tender that was R33.6-million over budget and having the worst technical score of the three shortlisted companies.
Maduna, who is chairman of the Gauteng health department’s acquisitions council, also allegedly ignored protests by the Gauteng Shared Services Centre, which handles the bulk of the province’s procurement.
The Shared Services Centre subsequently refused to sign off the deal with African Ultra Violet, saying the premium charged by the company was “unacceptably high” and the deal should “be reconsidered.”
Tecmed Africa, the bidder with the highest technical score, and also the lowest in price, at R16.8-million, expressed “surprise” at the outcome of the tendering.
African Ultra Violet Suppliers, owned by Mashudu Tshivhase, who is executive chairman of African Legend Technologies, won the tender in May last year.
The tender was also the subject of a court hearing when one of the three shortlisted bidders, Kubical Africa, made an urgent application for a court interdict. Kubical was excluded from the bidding on the grounds that it had filed incomplete tender documents.
Documents in the possession of The Times show that Tecmed was listed as the “most inexpensive option with the highest total points scored. This bid also scored the highest technical points (70.77 percent)”. The company quoted its service at R16 874 260, which was over budget by R1 874 260.
The tender, which was set down at R15-million, eventually went to African Ultra Violet for a whopping R48.6-million .
The documents also show that concerns raised by the Gauteng Shared Services Centre about the massive premium charged by the winning bidder were ignored by the health’s department acquisition council, chaired by Maduna.
Maduna is alleged to have tried to pressure the Shared Services Centre into signing-off the tender without noting Africa Ultra Violet’s R33.6-million premium.
In court papers relating to the Kubical dispute, Adrian Govender, a former commodity specialist for the Shared Services Centre, said he and his colleagues were aware of a “personal relationship” between Maduna and Ettienne Weideman, the executive manager of African Ultra Violet.
It is alleged that Maduna had cancelled a tender to supply mobile UV lights for the province’s ambulances in 2007 after he discovered that the contract was not awarded to SIMAMA, a company for which Weideman had worked previously.
“It was a known fact that [Maduna] and Weideman had a personal relationship in as far as Weideman was a bidder in tenders from the department of health,” Govender alleged.
He accused Maduna of “overriding” procurement policies and procedures “when it was best suited for purported personal gain, and to ensure such he awarded tenders to Weideman wherever he was employed or being the owner of any entity wholly or partially,” Govender alleged.
When the allegations were put to Maduna, he referred The Times to past “court processes”.
“Responses have to be in line with the court submissions. We can’t respond to this out of memory,” Maduna said.
In his answering affidavit in the Kubical matter, Africa Ultra Violet owner Tshivhase “objected” to the allegations levelled against Weideman and his company.
“I strongly object to the imputation of impropriety in awarding the tender based on allegations of friendship, personal gain or nepotism. No basis exists for this scurrilous allegation,” Tshivhase said.
But Govender was not the only one to allege that Maduna tried to meddle with tender processes.
Alan Moonsammy, the Shared Services Centre’s deputy general manager, warned that the health department’s acquisitions council “should note that the recommendation comes with a R33.6-million premium which is unreasonably high and ignores scores attained by the two bidders”.
On May 5 last year, Moonsammy sent an e-mail to the Shared Services Centre’s general manager, Monica Rubombora, Maduna and other officials in which he complained that he was being pressured to ignore the R33.6-million premium charged by African Ultra Violet.
Moonsammy wrote that he had been presented with a bid evaluation committee submission for the health department’s acquisitions council on April 24 that year.
He said he signed the submission only after adding a note highlighting his concerns about the “unacceptably high” R33.6-million premium and advising that the tender “should be reconsidered”.
Moonsammy wrote: “Today [May 5 2008] I was presented with [another] submission by Mike Swanepoel [a health department official] where he was instructed by the [acquisitions council] chair [Maduna] to exclude certain bits of key information from the recommendation section in the submission, e.g. the premium that will be paid.
“I was also requested to sign this submission and other submissions without making comments, which would make me a rubber-stamp, ignoring my role as a custodian of National Treasury’s regulations.”
Moonsammy refused to do so, but noted “that the submission may still be presented to the [acquisitions council] without my signature and the Gauteng health department may proceed in that manner if they so desire”.
The acquisitions council, under Maduna, then awarded the tender to African Ultra Violet.
Werner Begere, chief executive officer of Tecmed, on learning that the tender had gone to the bidder with the highest price and lowest technical score, said “We had heard that we were the preferred bidder”.
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