E-toll subcontractors revealed

Government has revealed 27 of the 33 subcontractors for the controversial Gauteng e-tolling project.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) and several other organisations have been calling for the disclosure of the subcontractors for several months.

DA shadow transport minister Ian Ollis in July asked transport minister Ben Martins when the list of subcontractors would be made public.

Martins responded to this question at the National Assembly on Friday, saying the main contract for e-tolling is between the SA National Roads Agency (Sanral) and Electronic Toll Collection (ETC).

“Sanral has one contractor to whom it looks for performance under this contract, namely ETC.

“The contract for the design, build and operation of the tolling system, applicable to the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project, was concluded by the Sanral with the company, ETC. This was pursuant to a competitive tender process undertaken by Sanral. In terms of the contract, ETC is obliged to design, build and operate the tolling system.”

The minister added that although ETC may have subcontracted part of the work, it is solely accountable to Sanral, which has no contractual or other relationship with the subcontractors appointed by ETC.

“This is usual practice in contracts of this nature. However, in the spirit of transparency, ETC has acceded to the request to provide the list of its subcontractors.”

Eltonation Electrical provided building and electrical maintenance services; Heritage Gardens saw to landscaping, irrigation and indoor plant maintenance services; and Impumelelo supplied furniture for the e-toll call centres. All three of these contracts have been closed.

The contracts with Bidvest Magnum for a CCTV System; Pepic & Kraus Print for printing of leaflets and instruction manuals; and CardPlus for supply of the customer identification card have also been closed.

Softline VIP was meant to supply a payroll system and services but this contract has expired. The 20 other contracts disclosed by the minister are current.

Clean Care Mobile is providing cleaning, pest control, waste management and hygiene services; Vodacom SP has been contracted for the provision of connectivity, especially VPN, fibre, routers; temporary microwave and 3G; and Internet Solutions will provide connectivity for remote sites and kiosks.

Neotel will provide digital telephone lines and operations services; 3D Design was contracted for branding and Scan Display/Ndlovu Manufacturing will be constructing temporary kiosks.

Omniscience was contracted by ETC for the development of a static and dynamic Web site; e-Logics for the provision of an SMS Gateway solution; Callforce for the supply of temporary staffing for the call centre and manual validation; and FNB for the rental of PIN entry devices.

BidpaperPlus/Lithotech was contracted for the provision of stationery, print and postage services and packaging; and B/Sure Wright Surveillance for the electrical fencing.

Gijima Holdings was contracted for the provision of account and service delivery management, service management tools, incident management, problem management, change management, logical security management, asset and configuration management, capacity management, availability management, network support, IT service continuity management, database and data warehouse services management, and support and installations.

Q-Free Africa is supplying the tags for the system; Protea Coin is providing manned guarding services; Fidelity Security was contracted for armed response and alarm monitoring services; and Hyphen is providing a trade quest online card authorisation system.

Canteen services will be provided by Tsebo holdings; G4S Secure Solutions will see to cash in transit; and Supaswift/Fedex Express was contracted for general warehousing services for e-tags and consumables, as well as call centres for road users and delivery to road users.

Ollis says the disclosure of the subcontractors is a step in the right direction. This comes after links were made between subcontractors and ANC officials.

“In the interest of transparency around this project, the DA has been calling for these names to be made public for some time now. Sanral and ETC initially refused to identify the sub-contractors involved in the project.”

He adds that the companies will be scrutinised for any political connections that may have influenced their appointment.

Ollis will also request the value of each sub-contract from the department and the additional six names that were not released.

“Making information publicly available promotes transparency and good governance. In future, it would be useful for the cloak of secrecy around contractors for massive infrastructure projects to be lifted from the outset.”