OUTA told Minister Creecy how the driving licence card machine tender was manipulated, and now welcomes her announcement of an AG investigation
5 September 2024
OUTA welcomes Transport Minister Barbara Creecy’s announcement that the driving licence card machine tender award and contract will be investigated. This follows a meeting that OUTA CEO Wayne Duvenage had with Minister Creecy earlier this week, to raise concerns about, amongst other matters, the Driving Licence Card Account (DLCA) decision to appoint Idemia Identity and Security SA to provide the new smart driving licence card machine.
The DLCA is an entity of the Department of Transport, and the department announced on 1 September that it had appointed Idemia Identity and Security SA as the preferred bidder on 8 August.
The DLCA and department have refused to specify the contract price, but OUTA received evidence indicating this ballooned from the DLCA’s budgeted R468 million to as much as R898.597 million.
OUTA has for years repeatedly tried to get information from the DLCA and the department about the new driving licence card machine procurement process but this has been refused. The department has also refused to make public details of the various tenders and related bidders, including the awarded contract value.
After the department announced its decision to appoint Idemia as the successful bidder earlier this week, OUTA engaged with Minister Creecy, setting out key concerns and evidence of tender manipulation over this procurement.
OUTA is concerned that the tender for the card machine has been deliberately manipulated to ensure that a specific bidder was awarded the contract. This included repeatedly issuing, withdrawing and reissuing the tender, along with three extensions of the price validity period, which is highly irregular and discouraged by Treasury’s procurement guidelines.
“Since OUTA’s exposure of irregularities it has identified on this tender, more people and companies are coming forward to provide us with additional evidence of manipulation and serious irregularities pertaining to this tender,” says Duvenage.
Today (Thursday 5 September), the Minister released a statement confirming the investigation (see here), in which she said the Auditor-General is investigating the procurement and she has now asked the AG to expand this to include further issues in the procurement.
OUTA is grateful to the Minister for taking fast action on this crucial issue.
“We call on the Minister to exercise her powers to instruct the DLCA to desist from awarding this tender or signing the service level agreement with Idemia. We want this crucial matter thoroughly investigated,” says Duvenage.
“We believe there is enough evidence of wrongdoing for a legal review of the DLCA’s decision on this matter. This tender should be cancelled and reopened, with extremely robust oversight mechanisms in place.”
The concerns identified in the driving licence procurement process
OUTA detailed the concerns in a comprehensive letter which includes 11 annexures to the Minister.
Some of the issues and concerns raised are:
The DLCA ran the tender on at three occasions between 2021 and 2023, withdrawing it and re-issuing it, without providing the details and reasons for cancellation of each tender in a transparent manner. OUTA would like to know the exact reasons these tenders were cancelled.
Some of these early tenders and requests for information have been removed from the department’s website, although OUTA believes they should remain publicly accessible to enable civil society to track such matters.