Dodgy R1.2 billion school networks tender — Parliament demands answers

[Nat Quinn]

Communications minister Modli Gungubele has been called to account for a R1.2 billion tender awarded to undeserving companies in the Western Cape, City Press reports.

The contract was to provide local area network services to all public schools in the Western Cape.

The portfolio committee for communications wants the minister to explain why the State Information Technology Agency (Sita) breached supply chain management regulations regarding publishing and awarding the tender.

Sizwe Africa IT Group Chairperson, Vukile Mehana, complained of material irregularities in adjudicating and awarding the contract.

Sizwe Africa IT Group lost the tender bid to the Blue Networks Consortium.

Portfolio committee chairperson Makhosonke Maneli wrote to Gungubele, cautioning that the tender’s irregularities had led to irregular spending.

“The Auditor-General had previously raised key control deficiencies that contributed to a qualified audit opinion on Sita in 2019/20 due to noncompliance with supply chain management prescripts and a lack of contract management controls, which had led to irregular expenditure,” City Press quoted the letter as saying.

“Furthermore, the AG’s report for 2021/22 emphasised that the entity would need to strengthen its oversight of internal controls relating to credible financial reporting to curb future financial mismanagement.”

In response, Gungubele ordered Sita to provide a full background of the tender irregularity, with a one-week deadline which expired on 14 July 2023.

He also asked the agency to inform him of the status of “consequence management” against those involved in adjudicating and awarding the tender.

Sita has also been criticised for Digitech — the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies’ “digital products portal” — and for blowing R432 million on a new population register system that went undelivered.

The R744,000 Digitec platform. (Click to enlarge)

In June 2023, it was revealed that the communications department spent over R740,000 on the Digitech platform, which uses a Drupal template that costs $49 (R957 at the time).

Moreover, it was revealed that Digitech used “admin” for the administrator username and password.

A spokesperson for the department confirmed the administrator username and password combination, adding that the site’s developer says the issue has been fixed.

They also told MyBroadband that Sita had handled the redesign of Digitech.

In July 2022, it was revealed that the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) blew R432 million on an unfinished population register system.

Home Affairs, in 2017, appointed EOH Holdings to develop two T3 data centres with all equipment, a commercial off-the-shelf solution, and the related services to develop interfaces and migrate data from the Home Affairs National Information System to a new data store.

The project was supposed to be completed by November 2018. However, the deadline was missed.

However, EOH had completed the two data centres as contracted.

“To date, EOH has successfully delivered 51 of the 60 contracted milestones for phase 1 of the Project, which have been signed off and accepted by the department,” EOH group chief risk officer Fatima Newman told MyBroadband.

The DHA and Sita paid EOH R282 million for the completion of these milestones.

However, the Auditor-General found that the initial awarding of the tender to EOH was suspicious. It was discovered that EOH and Sita officials had allegedly engineered an unlawful scheme to ensure EOH would land the contract.

EOH demanded that the department pay an outstanding balance of R128 million with interest for the 51 contracted milestones of the project it had completed.

 

SOURCE:Dodgy R1.2 billion school networks tender — Parliament demands answers (mybroadband.co.za)

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