Member statement by Lynne Brown, MPL, ANC leader of the opposition in the Western Cape legislature, August 18 2011:

The sorry saga of the multimillion communication contract by this DA government to TBWA\ Hunt Lascaris is riddled with flaws every step of the way and the premier says everything is just hunky-dory!

The provincial treasury's report reads like a charge sheet with one incompetent bungling after the other of a process that had to be restarted three times over at great cost to the taxpayers and the DA thinks it is perfectly all right to after the fact paper over the cracks and to divert the attention away from the real breaches of guidelines and regulations.

Her officials ignored various warnings, contradictions, anomalies and instructions as well as Supply Chain Management, Legal Services, Provincial Treasury and National Treasury while they continued to engage with a company without it being duly procured or approved; running up unauthorised, wasteful and fruitless expenditure; nor did they follow the procedure for the procurement of a transversal contract.

To top it all: This contract was forced through before the local government election and thereafter other departments were forced to join the contract without it being identified prior to the tender process to be a single branding contract or one that would go beyond the department of the premier.

Besides the lack of control measures or good governance principles, why where almost every SMME being eliminated from competing as tender specs says they must be JSE-listed?

The DA deployed officials in this government should be suspended until this matter has been investigated.

Issued by the ANC Western Cape, August 18 2011

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