Companies owned by friends and families who enjoyed close ties with senior correctional services officials have allegedly and irregularly benefited from a R53-million contract largesse even before the National Treasury could issue procurement instructions, the Special Investigative Unit (SIU) said in its report.
The contracts related to the purchase of personal protective equipment (PPE) following the COVID-19 pandemic, a worldwide pandemic that engulfed all parts of the world between 2019 and 2021, had some of the senior health officials and executives probed for alleged corrupt practices.
In its report, the SIU established that the contracts wrongfully awarded to friends and families were “unauthorised expenditure, irregular expenditure, and fruitless and wasteful expenditure”, and that the officials had failed to perform their functions and their respective duties as required; that they had failed to ensure the process of contract awards was fair, equitable, transparent, competitive, and cost effective.
They had also failed to adequately test the market by sourcing more than one quotation from prospective service providers, thus depriving other potential service providers of competition and failing to ensure that the department paid a fair price, and they had failed to request that the service providers submit valid tax clearance certificates prior to issuing purchase orders to the suppliers.
The SIU concluded that those contracts were “unauthorised expenditure, irregular expenditure, and fruitless and wasteful expenditure.”
Last week, the department fired its chief financial officer, Dzivhuluwani Ligege, and Thivhonali Netshimbupfe, who were directors of procurement, after they were found guilty following a disciplinary hearing.
The SIU investigation also established that Ligege personally called the directors of some of the entities prior to them submitting any quotations. Ligege also, according to the SIU report seen by Sunday World, “approved the request for approval to deviate on the same day”.
Ligege also “approved awards to service providers, seemingly being fully aware of the fact that the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) failed to follow a fair, equitable, transparent, competitive, and cost-effective procurement process.”
Netshimbupfe, the SIU report stated, “authorised payments” to two companies “where no proper supply chain management process was followed”.
The report also says that Netshimbupfe “drafted and recommended requests for deviations, subsequent to issuing purchase order letters” to four of the six implicated companies.
The SIU told parliament in 2020 that it was probing 930 cases involving national, provincial, and local government departments related to the PPE corruption scandal in the country. The unit reported that 5,054 contracts awarded to 2,686 service providers were under their investigation.
The Special Tribunal had granted orders to the value of R174.5-million and set aside contracts worth R170.41-million, preventing huge losses to the state. The unit said it was probing R10.5-billion of the R15.6-billion the government spent COVID-19 from April to August 2020.
Correctional Services spokesperson Singabakho Nxumalo confirmed that Ligege and Netshimbupfe had been fired after they had been found guilty following the disciplinary hearing.
“The department is able to confirm that three senior managers were charged and underwent an internal disciplinary hearing process for noncompliance with prescripts related to the procurement of personal protective equipment for the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.
Nxumalo added that the third official, a director for logistics, “was found not guilty” and was back at work, adding that the department called SIU in 2020 to probe PPE procurement after receiving anonymous tip-offs that there were alleged irregularities in the tender processes.
The SIU reported to parliament in November 2022 that it had received an anonymous letter in August of the same year alleging that Ligege allegedly awarded PPE contracts worth more than R53-million to companies owned by family and friends.
SIU spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago confirmed that their investigation into the correctional services PPE scandal had been finalised.
