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City screens its tender bidders

The City of Cape Town has started screening the identity numbers of all businesspeople applying for tenders against its own payroll database. This follows instances of city councillors and officials winning tenders from the city. It played a role in the metro not receiving a clean audit from the office of the Auditor-General (AG) for the previous financial year. Instead, it received an unqualified audit. To obtain a clean audit, a municipality’s financial records must be free of mistakes. It must also show it has complied with all laws and regulations.

According to the AG’s full report, there was a “notable regression” in Cape Town. In the previous year, it received a clean audit. And this was a sticking point during Wednesday’s full council meeting. The ANC slammed the city for the findings on Wednesday. Tony Ehrenreich, the leader of the ANC in council, asked what the DA-led administration was doing to solve the problem. “The findings show the city has regressed, the facts speak for themselves. We don’t have to debate that… has the city asked the Auditor-General for advice,” asked Ehrenreich. Jeremia Thuysnma, ANC councillor, said there was a “very big difference” between a “clean audit” and an “unqualified audit”.

Mayor Patricia de Lille said the administration had met with the AG’s office earlier this year. De Lille said it had received advice and had already started implementing some of the measures. She said the ID numbers of all prospective bidders were now being screened against the city’s payroll system. This would make sure that city employees would no longer “have a finger in the pie”. “Every tender will be run against the payroll. I can only plead with councillors and officials to stop this practice. We will find out and we will penalise you.” De Lille stressed these were only minor instances that had denied Cape Town a clean audit. It did not mean there were high levels of corruption.

Only two municipalities out of the Western Cape’s 30 municipalities received clean audits. These were the Swartland and West Coast. The national government has a goal that all municipalities in the country must obtain a clean status by 2014.

Source: www.iol.co.za

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City screens its tender bidders

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