The Bulawayo City Council has come under attack from councillors over security laxity in its tender system, as it battles to recover a $100 000 deposit it paid to an engineering firm to supply a vehicle tracking system, but disappeared before delivering it. Nqobile Bhebhe Chief Reporter This comes at a time the local authority is contemplating instituting criminal proceedings on a firm that failed to deliver four ambulances from Japan.
In 2010, the municipality floated a tender for vehicle tracking system and management. It awarded Tracat Engineering company the deal.
The contract was signed in October 2011.
According to a confidential report, soon after sealing the deal, the constructor began playing hide and seek demanding alterations to the contract.
“Soon after signing the contract, the contactor had started raising quite a number of issues which included, among others, the wording of the bank guarantee which council had given them.
“Despite explanations from our bankers, Tracat was adamant that the wording should be changed,” part of the report reads.
“A supplementary report had been submitted to council explaining the circumstances and recommended that council accept the variation.”
According to the report, the council managed to amend the bank guarantee and send it to the constructor “who neither acknowledged receipt nor cancelled the existing contract”.
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“They had simply relocated to an unknown destination and all their telephone numbers were blocked, including their e-mail addresses.
“Unfortunately council had paid them a deposit and they were then handed over to council lawyers to try and use tracing agents and recover the deposit.
“However, the unnamed agent failed to trace Tracat Engineering Company ‘as if they had just vanished from the earth’.”
The local authority, bizarrely lays some of the blame on the aborted deal on bad publicity by the media.
The report said the contract was sealed at a time when the media reported that that City Hall and Tower Block could be auctioned to recover debts.
“The contractor had panicked and thought that council was a risky client to deal with and was no longer keen to do business with it,” part of the report reads.
Councillors expressed concern that the municipal systems were “lax and risky” adding that “council had given too much leeway to this company and in the process displayed an element of desperation hence the current problem”.
In another matter, council is seized with locating Axis Medical Corporation, a firm it contracted to supply four ambulances.
The report indicates that the firm’s owner began to be evasive soon after signing the agreement “giving excuses that his consignment could no longer leave Japan as scheduled because of the tsunami”.
After the tsunami, Axis Medical Corporation officials sent e-mails that had shipping documents “as if the consignment was on its way”.
“The problem was that the consignment never arrived or he had diverted what was supposed to be our consignment to someone else,” the report says.
The firm later demanded more money to clear the container which it insisted was in Beira, Mozambique, but council flatly declined to release more money.
The municipality is now contemplating taking legal action to address the issue.
