Municipality says it is working to find swift solutions

The Endumeni (Dundee) local municipality in KwaZulu-Natal says it is working to find a speedy solution after the unsettling Pietermaritzburg High Court ruling over the payroll system it procured for the purposes of paying staff and service providers.

This comes after the court ruled this week that the municipality cannot go ahead with procuring a payroll system from Munsoft (PTY) LTD, replacing one from CCG Systems, a company also in the payroll software space. Munsoft was also interdicted from doing any work at Endumeni and the IFP municipality was ordered to furnish the CCG Systems with copies of the record of, and written reasons for, the decision to award the tender to Munsoft.

The dispute stems from a tender which was awarded towards the end of last year to manage the municipality’s financial system. The municipality awarded the lucrative tender to Munsoft, right under the nose of CCG Systems which was already providing similar software, albeit on a month-to-month contract. Aggrieved by the decision of the municipality, CCG Systems went to the Pietermaritzburg High Court to halt the award and the interim ruling was in its favour.

Despite this legal setback, the municipality told IOL on Saturday that it has a plan in place to deal with the matter before it cripples its operations. The municipal manager, Sithembiso Ntombela, said the council had a special sitting on March 28 to discuss the matter and resolved to escalate the same to KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Treasury for guidance. “The community will be assured that this matter is resolved in the most adequate and cost-effective manner and provision of services is not interrupted,” he said.

Ntombela stressed that all procurement rules were followed when the tender was awarded. “The municipality is doing everything within its power and within the law to ensure that its service providers and its employees are not affected, as there are other alternative ways such as manual transacting through the bank and payroll that can be utilised. “However, the interim court order has not restrained the municipality to utilise services that have already been procured by the municipality,” Ntombela said.

Ntombela lamented that the losing bidder had to go to court. “It is unfortunate the CCG Systems (Pty) Ltd has opted to hang on for dear life to a contract that has expired by running to court and falsely construed the facts before court to prevent the appointment of its competitor. “It a common practice to run two systems parallel whenever there is a change in financial systems to ensure a smooth migration of data. “Hence, the municipality extended the CCG Systems (Pty) Ltd contract on a month-to-month basis during a takeover or change of systems,” Ntombela said.

“Firstly, CCG Systems (Pty) Ltd did not approach court pleading that it has a valid and lawful contract with the municipality. “This places CCG in the same position as other aspirant bidders who would have wanted to participate in the bid had this bid been an open bid. “Furthermore, it is interesting for the public to note that CCG’s attempt to use the courts to run the municipality’s SCM processes is marred with dishonesty as CCG Systems (Pty) Ltd pleaded that it heard that the Municipality was going to embark on a regulation 32 process from a whistle-blower, while CCG was advised of this fact by the municipal manager,” he said.

Ntombela said CCG’s financial system has pitted them against the auditor-general and their audit outcomes have been affected. Furthermore, the CCG’s financial system has been contributing to the municipality’s audit outcome regression, he claimed. “Since the inception of CCG’s financial system, the municipality has been receiving qualified audit opinion reports for the past three consecutive years. “The auditor-general has highlighted inadequate configuration of the financial system as one of the deficiencies that has resulted in the stagnation of the audit outcome,” he claimed.