Pretoria – The City of Tshwane has announced the suspension of five unnamed senior employees for their part in awarding the controversial Rooiwal tender award to Blackhead Consulting.
The City of Tshwane on Saturday said it placed the senior employees on “precautionary suspension”.
The move follows the outcome of a year-long internal disciplinary process that found the senior employees guilty of one of the four charges they faced.
The cholera outbreak in Hammanskraal, which killed 23 people last year, put Rooiwal wastewater treatment works under the spotlight.
“A final determination was made yesterday (Friday, 19 April) to place them on precautionary suspension with full pay,” the City said in a statement.
“The officials were found not guilty on three charges but were found guilty on one charge and the sanction was suspension for one month without pay.”
However, the City said it “strenuously disagrees” with the outcome of the disciplinary process and has resolved to appeal the entire outcome of the disciplinary process at the Labour Court.
“The City is of the view that, their continued presence at the workplace, will be detrimental to the stability of the municipality,” the statement said.
“The officials were charged for being grossly negligent and/or derelict in the performance of their duties and that their conduct subsequently led to a breach of various legislation, policies, and codes of conduct.”
The five officials faced the following charges:
- Allowing Blackhead Consulting to progress to the next stage of the evaluation without being registered with the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) and also without having the required CIDB 9CE or 9ME.
- Consensus-based decision-making instead of evaluating independently as members of the Bid Evaluation Committee (BEC).
- Inclusion of Blackhead Consulting services to render professional services in circumstances where the city had already appointed a company to render professional services. Consequently, the city incurred costs of R10 999 786.96
- Evaluating the winning bidder on 1,4m belt presses width when the specification required a 2m width.
“The officials were not found guilty on the first three charges but were found guilty on the fourth charge and the disciplinary board chairperson recommended a sanction of suspension for one month without pay,”te City said.
“The city was disappointed and disagreed with the findings of the chairperson and sought legal opinion on the matter.”
The City said legal opinion suggested that the five implicated officials ought to have been dismissed on the finding of guilt of charge 4 by the Chairperson, in line with section 14A of the Code of Conduct, and Clause 2.7.6 and/or Clause 2.70.10 of the Collective Agreement.
In light of the nature and severity of the charges, together with the fact that the trust relationship has broken down irretrievably, City Manager Johann Mettler suspended the employees on full pay, pending a review of the ruling,
“The officials are senior employees of the municipality and the majority of them on the BEC are engineers and ought to have applied themselves properly when evaluating the tender regarding the belt pressers,” Mettler said.
