Taxpayers can sit in on tender awards

The Gauteng government has vowed to make the awarding of tenders more transparent.

Gauteng residents will now be able to sit in on every stage of the tender-awarding process - including the bid adjudication.

They will be privy to details of the bidders, their bids and the amounts involved, and the basis on which the adjudication committee awards the tender.

But, in November, the ANC shot down a proposal by the DA that the City of Ekurhuleni's tendering processes be more open to the public.

Ekurhuleni's metro council's ANC chief whip, Robert Mashego, told The Times that his party was willing to reconsider its stance but only after meeting Gauteng Premier David Makhura.

Said Mashego: "From the onset, we were not vehemently opposed to [the proposal]. We were merely unhappy with certain things.

"If the provincial government wants to open up tender adjudication meetings to the public, we would take that line. But we would want to meet [Makhura] to find out how he wants us to follow."

Makhura's administration wants to establish an integrity management office "we hope in the next financial year". Its job would be to oversee the awarding of tenders.

Makhura recently told a delegation of the National Council of Provinces: "What is there to hide? We have nothing to hide, but corruption to find. Our province will soon reach the stage at which [the tender process] is no longer a secret."

Gauteng finance MEC Barbara Creecy yesterday announced that 19 provincial departments and other entities had been given clean audit reports for the 2013-2014 financial year. She said this was achieved by training public officials in financial management.

"The integrity of supply chain management in provincial departments has been enhanced by partnering with the State Security Agency to conduct comprehensive background checks on all officials tasked with [procurement]," Creecy said.