22 July 2019

In a bid TO clean-up the now “contaminated” procurement process of appointing contractors to provide security, cleaning, and landscaping services at health facilities across the province, the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health has decided to cancel and start over.

This follows the illegal leaking of documents of the Technical Evaluating Committee containing a list of names of service providers whose applications were being considered for forwarding to the Bid Evaluations Committee. The premature sharing - including on social media - of such information has contaminated the process, and means that whatever decision is taken henceforth regarding the appointment of successful bidders, is likely to cause strife among or even between the parties concerned. This is regardless whether or not any of the applicants have been prejudiced in any way [there is currently no evidence to this effect].

The Department is extremely concerned by this malicious breaching of its established internal document management protocols, and the compromising of the overall integrity of this procurement process - and is now investigating how this came about.

The Department has since made a request to the KZN Treasury, as the custodian of the public purse, to withdraw and restart the entire process.

The above-mentioned services at hospitals, clinics and Community Health Centres will continue being rendered and managed as they are on a month-to-month basis, until the current challenge has been resolved.

This urgent and decisive action by the leadership of the Department once again underscores its renewed commitment to fiscal discipline, transparency and public accountability.