The Amajuba district municipality, anchored in Newcastle in northern KwaZulu-Natal, has been dragged to the Pietermaritzburg High Court after it allegedly awarded a tender that was already awarded to another company at a higher price.
The IFP-run municipality is being dragged to court by a company called Melokuhle Trading on an urgent basis.
The district municipality is responsible for providing water and sanitation services to the Newcastle, Emadlangeni, and Dannhauser local municipalities.
The tender that has landed the municipality in court is the Goodehoop wastewater and treatment works, which was awarded to SNA Construction on July 21, and the period to object was immediately closed for the losing bidders, sparking an outcry.
Melokuhle Trading requests the court registrar to hear the matter on August 28 or a later date.
In the main, Melokuhle Trading argues that the process that was followed to award the tender is flawed; hence, it should be set aside and readvertised under new terms considering the passage of time.
The company argues that the tender was only opened to a few selected companies with the capacity and the financial muscle to carry out the work.
If the municipality decided to override that, it should have timeously informed the selected few companies on its panel.
R73-million tender
Furthermore, it argues that before committing the alleged transgression, the municipality awarded the tender to it for R73-million in October 2024.
However, the municipality then failed to issue a letter to commence the work, although it was ready to do so.
The municipality allegedly did not respond to communications to issue the commencement letter until the agreement was cancelled.
The tender was then readvertised, where SNA Construction was announced as the winning bidder, which Melokuhle Trading told the court that “it was bizarre, if not nefarious”.
Melokuhle Trading further told the court that when it tried to bid for the readvertised tender, the company was refused bid documents and told the tender is restricted to only a few companies with 8-CE graded contractors.
“This was of considerable concern, given that the applicant [Melokuhle Trading] was registered on the panel and had previously been awarded the same project,” Melokuhle said in the court papers.
The district municipality and SNA Construction, the second respondent in the case, have not yet submitted their response papers.