The recently appointed mayor of the City of Tshwane, Solly Msimanga, has renewed calls to get out of the multimillion-rand smart meter contract the city entered into during the previous ANC-led government.
Msimanga made the call yesterday in Centurion when he was presenting his "100 days in office" report' where he pointed out "the work to turn the capital around has only just begun, but progress has been made".
Since the DA-led administration took over Tshwane from the ANC's stranglehold during this year's municipal elections, the opposition party has been exposing various cases of alleged corrupt activities and maladministration practices from the previous administration.
"We appreciate that we inherited what can only be described as a 'mess', with unlawful contracts and costly projects that now have to be completed, and some of them undone, before completion is in our sights," said Msimanga.
He noted the city is in the process of extricating itself from the Peu smart meter contract, which "we believe was unlawfully entered into by the previous administration to the tune of billions".
According to a Business Day report, the contract' meant to give Tshwane better credit control' started in October 2013. Peu was to receive 19.5% of all electricity charges as commission, and the council must pay R950 million to get out of the contract.
The mayor's remarks come as business lobby group AfriBusiness applied to the High Court in Pretoria to have the contract set aside on the basis that it is irregular.
Msimanga disclosed that Tshwane has already paid Peu R1.65 billion since the contract started in 2013.
"In so doing, the city has been haemorrhaging public funds that could otherwise be used to provide the services to the millions of people in Tshwane who need a stable and sustainable electricity supply. This is not possible with the current contract in place, and we are hopeful that the courts will rule in our favour and declare the contract invalid, so we may begin to provide affordable prepaid electricity to some of the poorer people of the capital.
"With respect to this item, our attorney will file concession affidavits this week to extricate the city from the contract."
He noted city officials were also instructed to come up with an improved contract management system to prevent the city from entering into such contracts in the future.
"We have launched programmes and mechanisms designed to save the city money. Chief among these are the strategic sourcing of goods, an open tender system, and e-procurement systems which are all, in one way or another, aimed at curbing leakages in the supply chain process, maladministration and intelligence exercise, cost of delivering municipal services, and fraud cases that have been instituted against corrupt officials," he said.
Msimanga also said it should be noted the City of Tshwane won the award for having the most access to WiFi for its residents.
"We are proud of this and we hope that more and more of our residents will, in the near future, be plugged into the city's free WiFi. We are also looking at different funding models for this WiFi to ensure that the city does not foot the bill for this service entirely, but also that private partnerships can be entered into so that city funds can be freed up to use on other priority items."
He noted the ICT infrastructure the administration inherited was dilapidated and overrun with outdated software, servers out of warranty, and the city's entire network left vulnerable and exposed.
"To address this, we are diverting capital expenditure from other ICT projects to shore up the city's ICT infrastructure, and we will refer the broadband contract to a transactional advisor to check legality and value for money of the contract."
In November' the city filed a concession affidavit with the court, saying the contract was unaffordable' irregular' irrational and should be declared unlawful and set aside.
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