Tshwane service delivery chaos looming as vehicle tender expires

31 August 2020

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has learnt that one of the City of Tshwane's core service delivery tenders to lease construction vehicles, refuse removal trucks and specialist yellow plant machines and equipment is due to expire, with no new tender set to replace it.

The CSS46 tender in question allows the City to hire key service delivery vehicles and equipment as and when they are required.

Multiple departments across the city are dependent on this tender to support their operations.

This includes refuse trucks that are used by the waste department to clear garbage, tractor loader backhoes (TLBs) used by the water and sanitation teams to respond to leaks, and specialist electricity trucks to respond to outages.

The original awarding of this tender, which took place under the ANC, was in itself problematic and offered poor value for money for the city.

Prior to the ANC’s power grab in Tshwane five months ago, the DA had begun a process of extracting the City from the contract and restructuring the tender to derive more value from it.

However, this work was undone when the ANC unlawfully dissolved the municipal council and placed the city under administration.

The ANC administrators subsequently extended the existing faulty CSS46 contract, which expires on 31 August.

The City received over 700 bids for the new tender (CSS003) which closed on 9 July 2020, yet to date the tender has not been adjudicated or awarded.

The ANC administrators have clearly had no oversight over the supply chain processes in the city.

With no contract in place, from 1 September, operations in the city will grind to a halt, as departments are no longer able to provide crucial basic service delivery to Tshwane residents, with no vehicles or equipment.

As a result, they have compromised the municipality’s operational efficiency to an even greater extent than they had already done over the past five months, due to their incompetence.

Issued by Randall Williams, DA Tshwane Mayoral Candidate, 31 August 2020