Stellenbosch Municipality contractor wants answers over bid documents

A Black African contractor who believes the Stellenbosch Municipality discriminated against his company, Beatrice Nina Group (Pty), is struggling to get answers as he has still not received any of the documents requested through a Promotion of Access to Information (Paia) application.

On November 25, Willyford Halala filed a Paia application to the Stellenbosch Municipality, to which he only received approval on January 6. Halala’s application requested bid documents from himself and other bidders; bid adjudication committee minutes and reports; and any other documentation “evidencing the adjudication of the bids in Bid B/SM69/21”.

The approval letter, seen by the Cape Times, signed by the information officer in relation to the documents, was for 1 532 pages. Halala said: “On or about 27 January 2022, we paid an access fee of R919.20 to Stellenbosch Municipality for access to (the) documents. On the same day we sent proof of payment to the office of the Municipal Information Officer.

“The next day our attorney wrote a letter to the Stellenbosch Municipality requesting it to make the documents available for collection. The attorney's letter was neither acknowledged nor responded to.

“Despite the Stellenbosch Municipality having granted us access to the above-mentioned documents, it has stubbornly refused to hand over the documents. It is unconstitutional, unlawful and unprofessional conduct on the part of the municipality to ignore its own approval and further to ignore a letter from our erstwhile attorney of record,” said Halala.

He added that the only reason he could conclude for the refusal was: “The municipality does not want us to have access to the documents as it fears that we might further detect more red flags than the ones detected in the BEC/BAC Memorandum.”

The memorandum he refers to was erroneously sent to Halala by a staff member. From it, he said, he uncovered that he had in fact qualified for categories of a panel tender he was disqualified for. The tender was for pruning, felling and stump-grinding trees for the period ending June 30, 2024.

Along with five other companies, he was awarded for felling or pruning of trees and emergency pruning or felling of trees but excluded for the cutting of oak trees, felling or pruning under electrical cables and stump-grinding, which was only awarded to three companies.

In an about-turn, the municipality considered an appeal by Halala and on January 18 upheld the categories he was previously disqualified for. It stated: “The municipality has considered the appeal and hereby upheld on the following categories: pruning and felling under the electrical cables, and cutting and pruning of oak trees. However, the grinding of stumps was unsuccessful due to the price being higher than other service providers.”

Meanwhile, Halala said he had still not received any work relating to the tender. The municipality would not answer questions around any of the allegations or why it had not yet provided Halala with the documents. “The municipality will not provide any further comment to these unwarranted claims and stands by our comments previously provided,” said municipality spokesperson Stuart Grobbelaar.