Open letter to Public Protector and Competition Commission
Collusion in Construction Industry
4th February 2013
COSATU calls on the Competition Commission, Public Protector and Public Service Commission to investigate Helen Zille and the construction of the IRT bus system routes in Cape Town, in addition to the stadium, due to persistent allegations of corruption and price fixing. There are ongoing allegations about collaboration amongst senior Government [city] officials and the Construction companies involved, including the suppliers e.g. steel etc. (see City Press report).
COSATU further calls for criminal charges to be laid against the directors of the recently exposed construction companies, and for the imposition of jail terms for the guilty parties. COSATU now understands why the Business sector in SA was opposed to having jail sanctions included for the crime of price fixing, during the negotiations on the Companies Act framework.
This is because the business sector knows about the extent of corruption in the price fixing in many companies. The crime of price fixing is like any other fraud and should be accompanied with jail sentences, to serve as a deterrent to stop this rot of corruption in the private sector. The directors of the companies should ultimately be held accountable for this conduct, as the abuse of the system is accompanied with sophisticated kickbacks to political leadership of Parties.
The funding of the Political parties in the Western Cape is no doubt related to the rapid expansion of prices between the quoted and the final paid prices, in the mega projects. The mega projects in the City of CT have all run over budget, even in spite of it having been tendered with inflated prices. This is in partly why the political parties do not want to release the details of the funding they get from corporate sector.
Premier Zille who was involved in some dubious funding shenanigans recently, was responsible for the City of Cape Town at the time of the allocation of many of these mega projects and should also be investigated. The amount of money going to the DA fundraising is exceptional, as reported by many sources. There are no free lunches as recently revealed in Zille expose, linked to the Guptas, and the DA has shown itself to be questionable in raising the money that they buy votes with.
The Public Protector and the Public Servants Commission is called upon to investigate the role of Premier Zille in many of these underhand practices.
Statement issued by COSATU Western Cape Provincial Secretary, Tony Ehrenreich, February 4 2013
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
