It has taken two years, but a small non-profit, Seriti Institute, has finally won its battle to set aside all 11 contracts in the R13-billion Community Work Programme.<\/p>\n
Like this story? Be an amaB Supporter<\/a> <\/span>to help us do more. Sign up for our newsletter<\/a><\/span> to get more.<\/em><\/p>\n In 2018, Seriti took the department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) to court after Seriti lost a tender to be appointed as an \u201cimplementing agent\u201d for the job creation and poverty alleviation initiative.<\/p>\n Implementing agents run the programme on the ground on behalf of Cogta.<\/p>\n On Friday, the Pretoria high court declared the procurement process \u201cconstitutionally invalid and unlawful\u201d and set it aside.<\/p>\n \u201cI am satisfied that there is no evidence of fairness in the CWP procurement process\u2026 Accordingly, I am of the view that the evaluation of the process, the selection and appointment of the CWP implementing agents was unlawful,\u201d Judge Selemang Mokose ruled.<\/p>\n However, this does not mean that the Community Work Programme \u2014 which is a lifeline for roughly 280 000 unemployed \u2014 is in jeopardy.<\/p>\n Seriti had asked the court to give Cogta three months to appoint new implementing agents. Instead, the court ruled that the \u201cconstitutionally invalid and unlawful\u201d contracts will be allowed to continue until they naturally come to an end in March next year.<\/p>\n \u201cThe effort of re-issuing and processing a new [request for proposals] is a singularly expensive exercise which could take several months. Setting it aside could lead to disruption and prejudice to the beneficiaries,\u201d Mokose noted.<\/p>\n Seriti did, however, walk away with something: The government will have to pay the costs of the application, including the costs of two counsel.<\/p>\n Although the Community Work Programme participants earn little \u2014 just R780 a month \u2014 the contracts can be highly lucrative for the implementing agents.<\/p>\n In order to qualify as implementing agents, non-profits had to submit audited financials showing turnover of more than R5-million a year, as well as proof they had managed similar programmes in the past.<\/p>\n Yet documents disclosed as part of the two-year court battle raise serious questions about the procurement process and Cogta\u2019s care of public funds.<\/p>\n Initially, 81 of the 89 bidders were disqualified for non-compliance, including Seriti, which has years of experience with the programme.<\/p>\n Four days later, however, the evaluation committee decided that aspects of the tender were vague and requested all disqualified bidders to submit their outstanding documentation.<\/p>\n An email was sent to 71 of the bidders, including Seriti. The email, however, was sent to the wrong email address which meant that Seriti never knew it had an opportunity to submit additional documentation.<\/p>\n \u201cI am satisfied that had the applicant received the email inviting it to submit further documents, it would have provided the said documents and cured any deficiencies in its proposal,\u201d Mokose ruled.<\/p>\n In addition to this, an independent assessment of the shortlisted bidders, conducted before contracts were awarded, identified serious problems.<\/p>\n One bidder was described as \u201ca small organisation which appeared to be struggling to stay afloat\u201d with \u201cevident capacity challenges\u201d. Another bidder, the report noted, \u201cdid not have a functional governing body or board of trustees\/directors to effect governance oversight to their operations\u201d.<\/p>\n Despite this, both non-profits were awarded contracts to run the programme for three years. However, both were suspended 18 months into the contract.<\/p>\n Like this story? Be an amaB Supporter<\/a> <\/span>to help us do more. Sign up for our newsletter<\/a><\/span> to get more.<\/em><\/p>\n Despite ample evidence that the procurement was tainted, Cogta continued to fight the case against Seriti. In court, counsel for the government argued that the usual procurement rules did not apply as the appointment of implementing agents \u201cwas not a procurement or tender process\u201d but a transfer mechanism.<\/p>\n But Mokose was having none of this, and reminded the government that, amongst other things, procurement legislation \u201cserves as a guardian against a process that is skewed by corrupt influences\u201d.<\/p>\n Also read<\/strong><\/p>\n A multi-billion rand programme yet no protective clothing<\/a><\/strong> After a two-year battle, a small non-profit is victorious as the Pretoria high court sets aside all 11 contracts in government\u2019s flagship jobs programme.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":21448,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[292,407],"class_list":["post-12159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-cwp","tag-seriti"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30199,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12159\/revisions\/30199"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}An expensive typo<\/h5>\n
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\n<\/strong>On the trail of the CWP\u2019s orange gear<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"