R150 MILLION LEASE VEHICLE OVERPAYMENT MUST BE INVESTIGATED

Gauteng Premier Nomvula Mokonyane must order an investigation into the possible R150 million overpayment for vehicles, trucks and graders by the Gauteng roads and transport department, as revealed in today's City Press newspaper.

The total payment is reportedly R200 million to 22 emerging companies, signed off in a hurry in October last year, committing government to paying as much as three times market value for lease vehicles.

Approval was only sought two months later in December from the department's Trading Entity Acquisition Committee that decides on tenders and contracts.

There appears to be a massive overpayment to favoured companies. For instance, rental of 40 trucks for 5 years will cost R139 million, whereas they could have all been bought for about R25 million.

63 bakkies could have been purchased for R17 million, rather than shelving out R71.6 million in bakkie rental for five years.

This whole deal stinks. It is one more fishy deal by the department's Impophoma Infrastructure Support Entity, about which I have always been suspicious as a source of corruption.

According to City Press, Mr Caswell Mthombeni of Caswell Mtombeni Consultants got a R25 million slice of this tender from Impophoma, although he had once represented Impophoma at a meeting to discuss which company would replace Ilima Projects when it was fired from the building of Jabulani Hospital in Soweto. This is an outrageous conflict of interests, and there are probably many more.

Premier Mokonyane needs to tell us what she is going to do to clean up this nest of probable corruption that eats up vast amounts of money that is desperately needed for service delivery.

Statement by Jack Bloom MPL, Democratic Alliance Gauteng corruption spokesman, June 7 2009

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter