A secret document intercepted by the SA police in London alerted National Police Commissioner General Bheki Cele to the imminent outsourcing of the entire police forensics unit. "There was a huge document of completely outsourcing the department", he told Parliament yesterday. "A whole department? if we didn't find the document there would be no police forensics."
Cele said the document was signed on his behalf. This was one of several bombshells dropped by Cele before the National Assembly's police committee, where he and other top officials were called to explain ongoing supply chain management problems at the SA Police Force (SAPS). It comes after the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) probe was instituted into the allegations of R4-billion in corrupt tenders in both the SAPS and in the Public Works Department, a Public Protector's probe into the media reports of a second R500-million police headquarters leased on a dodgy tender and the recent resignation of Cele's deputy, the divisional commissioner of supply management unit, Lieutenant-General Hamilton Hlela and two of his subordinates, Lieutenant-General Matthews Siwundla and his subordinate, Major-General Stephanus Terblanche.
Cele said the head of forensics has also since resigned, while his replacement had already fired five staff members. A range of corrupt activities are under the microscope. He told a story of extraordinary shenanigans in tender procedures and rampant outsourcing, which left the police virtually without internal capacity with several dodgy deals placed before him to sign in a hurry without due explanation, allegedly by Hlela, shortly after he took office a year ago. He said he was almost made to sign off on a R4bn private-public partnership deal to build a massive new headquarters in Pretoria, but refused. He also refused to sign a contract for the upgrade of his and Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa's offices, even though the police were renting the building. He later found out that the lease on the current headquarters had been extended for 10 years, without his knowledge. While Cele painted himself as innocent, he revealed a sordid picture of a disabled SAPS with management and command and control systems, supply chain management, special projects all but collapsed.
The general also indicated that this may be the tip of the iceberg. MPs called the situation "the highest form of mismanagement", "disgusting", "shocking" and "discouraging". Cele said that if Parliament was a court, he would have had "to plead guilty", stressing that one year in the saddle was not enough to clean up "the mess". He called in the SIU in November last year after another contract was discovered which had been signed without his approval - this time for the manufacture of shirts for the police force.
Hlela yesterday denied that he had put any dodgy contracts before Cele. For instance, he said that the contract for the new R4bn headquarters had been signed off on by Cele's predecessor, Jackie Selebi. "He threw it out", said Hlela. MPs were concerned that the SAPS was poised to sign an agreement with Public Works to hand over its maintenance role of police properties to the SAPS, while it had no capacity. The police had a R13bn backlog in its own maintenance responsibilities, while some police stations being built since 2001 are yet to be completed.
The commissioner admitted frankly that much of the SAPS capacity had dwindled because many of the services had been outsourced. "Even our small capacity is arrested", he said. "For example, we have 34 bricklayers in SAPS, but they are not allowed to lay a brick. The work is given to brokers. There is a very popular broker in the (supply chain) department, Midway Two. The cost escalations come from there. It is a mad situation. That is why we have no capacity."
Gary Kruser, the new acting deputy commissioner in the supply chain management division, said Midway Two had won a host of tenders from the department. "We have an example where the cleaning services is done by the same company which owns the mechanics, building services and the same people who've got the Tetra network tenders (a R1 billion contract for an upgrade of Eastern Cape digital two-way radio systems). The same shareholders? all from the same company," he said. "I don't know how someone can be so efficient that they get all the tenders? I think we also need to have regular intelligence integrity checks on people to ensure integrity in tenders? I think not enough to have regulatory processes."
Public Works Department officials also stressed that the SIU investigation was drawing to a close and would feed into the Public Protector's report on the lease of the new headquarters. It is understood that the report will be completed by the middle of the month.
Source: IoL
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