Gauteng government launches open tender process
JOBURG - The Gauteng transport department and Gauteng treasury are piloting a new open tender process in an attempt to restore public confidence in the provincial government’s tender processes.
According to Gauteng Finance MEC Barbara Creecy, the public would now be able to witness the decision-making processes around the awarding of tenders in the province.
“We want to re-establish public confidence in the tender process and we believe that the best way to do this is to make the process more open to public scrutiny so that bidders are convinced that the award process is fair and transparent,” said Creecy.
The public would also be able to view the outcomes of each stage of the tender process via the provincial treasury website.
The provincial treasury also introduced other measures to enhance transparency of existing tender processes, including ensuring detailed research to establish contract conditions and proper cost and time estimates prior to advertising – safeguarding against needing to change criteria during the evaluation itself.
Further, the provincial treasury would observe in-house departmental tender processes to ensure greater compliance with supply chain management procedures, and would appoint an independent probity team to audit all tenders with a contract value of more than R50 million.
Creecy was speaking at the launch of the upgrade of Cedar Road in Northern Johannesburg, which would be the pilot project for the open tender process.
The upgrade was estimated to cost R50 million.
