Maverick managers and lazy officials are why things don't get done says Makana Municipal Manager Ntombi Baart – not red tape, as she revealed that municipal bosses had flouted procurement procedures to the tune of around R6.6 million.
Maverick managers and lazy officials are why things don't get done says Makana Municipal Manager Ntombi Baart – not red tape, as she revealed that municipal bosses had flouted procurement procedures to the tune of around R6.6 million.
Baart was responding to suggestions this week that procurement procedures be streamlined. Officials say they're in a Catch 22 situation: stick to the letter of the law and deprive Makana's citizens of the services they deserve, or bend the rules and get the job done.
At Tuesday's finance committee meeting, Baart said no fewer than 348 instances had been recorded of deviations from the supply chain management – the processes laid down by law through which the municipality is supposed to acquire goods and services – amounting to R6.6 million.
Councillor Les Reynolds suggested this might be because the municipality's procurement system was so slow that when, for example, a computer broke down, it took a long time to get it fixed, thus delaying service delivery.
"I speak to directors and senior officials. They have been frustrated by the length of time to buy something simple," Reynolds said, suggested that ways be found to speed the process up.
It was a theme continued the next day at an infrastructural committee meeting, where an official spoke about frustrations with red tape in the procurement process. He said the system of getting three quotations from service providers, for instance, caused too much delay.
"As much as we want the compliance issue, we must not compromise service delivery," the official said.
But Baart lays the blame for service-delivery delays firmly at the feet of directors and senior officials who don't do things the way they're supposed to.
She said these senior officials had twice been sent to training workshops on supply chain management.
"But the issue is that they don't want to comply because they make everything an urgency," Baart said.
"I don't know why directors are clinging to supply chain management functions when it is not their core function," she said, referring to the practice by some directors of asking for quotations themselves, instead of leaving this to the supply chain unit.
Acting Chief Financial Officer, Namhla Dlulane, backed Baart.
She said half the time she had been at the municipality, it had been spent on addressing supply chain management policy, "which people are refusing to work with".
She said one official, in particular, had brought many requests to deviate from the policy.
"I asked, 'Have you ever read the SCM policy?'.
"She said she didn't, but worked in relation to the SCM policy," Dlulane said.
She said some officials might take a month to come back with additional information, even though they had asked to deviate from the policy on account of its supposedly being a matter of urgency.
"And you wonder who is the problem," Dlulane said.
Procurement plans were aligned to the service delivery and budget implementation plan, Dlulane explained. And the report tabled to the committee went on to explain that a procurement plan had several components, including a description of the goods, their estimated value, the submission of specifications and the envisaged date of the bid adjudication committee meeting.
The plan was structured in this way in an attempt to ensure that projects were implemented promptly and that money allocate for them was appropriately spent.
Baart acknowledged the frustration caused by delays and admitted that the supply chain unit had limited resources, but said she had mandated Corporate Services to look into this.
The unit had two interns and a contract worker had recently been appointed. Another intern for the unit was in the pipeline.
