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Transport Minister Barbara Creecy. Picture: Gallo Images
Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy has instructed her department to file a high court application for a declaratory order regarding the R400 million tender for driving license card machines.
This, after the Auditor General (AG) identified irregularities over the preferred bidder Idemia’s South Africa contract.
Creecy has received the final report from the AG last month on the investigation into alleged serious irregularities about the procurement process for the provision of a new machine for the production of the planned new driving licence card.
In September 2024, Creecy instructed the AG to expedite and widen the audit scope for the new driving licence card procurement process after new evidence emerged of alleged serious irregularities in the decision to make Idemia the preferred bidder.
Creecy’s spokesperson, Collen Msibi, said that while the Minister made an undertaking to release the executive summary of the AG’s audit report, it is important to highlight some of the audit findings.
According to the report, the AG identified instances of non-compliance with the required procurement processes.
“The non-compliances emanated from transgressions of Supply Chain Management prescripts (Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), Treasury Regulations and Driving License Card Account (DLCA) SCM policies, rendering the procurement process irregular.”
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The AG also found that the identified instances of non-compliance were due to the DLCA’s inadequate budget analysis, which is part of the demand management process.
“Bids are not being evaluated according to the evaluation criteria as per the bid specifications, and scoring is inconsistent during the bid evaluation process.”
Furthermore, the AGSA noted that the bid evaluation committee (BEC) deviated from assessing the bids using the exact criteria set out in the bid specifications when evaluating documents provided by bidders.
“The AG audit of the DLCA’s SCM processes revealed irregularities in the tender evaluation. Idemia, the winning bidder, failed to meet key bid technical requirements. Their review also confirmed that the other bidders were not unfairly disqualified, as they did not meet the bid technical specifications.
“All bids submitted exceeded the R486,385 million budget set by the DLCA, indicating inadequate market analysis and budgeting.
“The DLCA used outdated pre-covid prices, and the budget they submitted to Cabinet for approval did not include all the costs for the contract, leading to Cabinet approving a memo that was not a true reflection of the cost of the contract.
“This poses the risk of the project being delayed or canceled due to insufficient funds,” the AG report revealed.
The tender was awarded to Idemia in 2024, but the AG has clarified that no payments have been made to the service provider.
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Creecy’s action followed the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa), providing her with new evidence of alleged serious irregularities in the decision to make Idemia the preferred bidder.
The budget for purchasing the machine was R468 million, but conflicting information surfaced about the value of Idemia’s bid, with it either being R762 million or R898 million.
Outa said at the time that its exposure of ‘big red flags’ about the tender had resulted in other parties allegedly coming forward with further evidence of manipulation and irregularities around the tender, which it passed onto the Minister.
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