- The Auditor-General South Africa’s report into the the awarding of a tender for new driver license cards highlights numerous problems.
- Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy is currently investigating how to proceed given the contents of the report.
- Locals will have to continue relying on an aging machine to print their license cards.
Back in September 2024, the Department of Transport announced that it had appointed French-based IDEMIA to help it produce driver license cards in South Africa.
Almost as soon as the tender award was announced, officials brought its validity into question and called for an audit into the tender process. That audit was conducted by the Auditor-General South Africa and it found that the tender process had been irregular.
Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy on Wednesday released an executive summary on the AGSA’s report highlighting some of the findings.
Unfortunately, the short of the matter is that the Department of Transport is going to have to sustain and maintain the current license printer while a solution is found. This isn’t ideal given the raft of issues that have plagued that printer over the years. The department will announce interim measures in “due course” per a statement.
What the problem is
In her executive summary of the AGSA’s finding, Creecy noted that the auditor identified non-compliance in the procurement caused by transgression of “Supply Chain Management prescripts, Treasury Regulations and Driving License Card Account (DLCA) SCM policies, rendering the procurement process irregular.”
Specifically, the DLCA’s budget analysis was indequate, the bids were not evaluated according to the criteria as outlined in the specifications and scoring of bids was inconsistent with the 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 BEC members had to use their judgment and make executive decisions on how to assess the bids due to ambiguous bid specifications, which did not clearly address the DLCA requirements. This ambiguity led to discrepancies identified by the AGSA, resulting in an unfair and non-transparent procurement process,” wrote Creecy.
The minister goes on to say the that DLCA even reviewed a machine that wasn’t even related to the tender instead of assessing whether the machine in the tender was suitable for use. This could, the AGSA notes, lead to the machine that was part of the bid, not being able to fulfill the requirements of the contract. If that were to happen, government would have to spend more time and money finding a suitable device.
However, the problems don’t stop at IDEMIA’s bid. The AGSA found that all bids submitted exceeded the R486.385 million budget.
This, the AGSA says, showcases “inadequate market analysis and budgeting” on the part of DLCA. The auditor reports that the DLCA used outdated pricing and excluded contract costs when it submitted a memo to Cabinet for approval of the project.
Still in park for now
Minister Creecy will be lodging a High Court application following receipt of this report with a view to obtaining guidance on how best to proceed.
As outlined in the Public Finance Management Act an accounting officer for a department or constitutional institution that “makes or permits an unauthorized expenditure, an irregular expenditure, or a fruitless and wasteful expenditure” has committed an act of financial misconduct. Of course, that is for a court to decide.
With that having been said, it’s clear that this process was plagued with problems from the off. As a result of the actions of a negligent few, local motorists will be forced to continue dealing with inefficiencies when procuring a new driver license card.
[Image – Skica911 from Pixabay]
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