Question NW1617 to the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services
29 June 2023 - NW1617
Yako, Ms Y to ask the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services
Whether his department has appointed a certain company (name furnished) on a contract as a sole supplier of the services; if not, what is the position in this regard; if so, (a) on what date was the company appointed, (b) what tender process was followed, (c) what services is the company appointed for and (d) what is the monetary value of the tender?
Reply:
To facilitate court recordings, the Department concluded a contract for the provision of Court Recording Technology (CRT) solution and its support and maintenance for a period of 5 years in 2016 (RFB 2014 02). The maintenance and support services for the CRT as defined in RFB 2014 02 expired on the 13 April 2021 and no replacement contract was put in place. The absence of a contract meant that no corrective and preventative maintenance was in place leading to collapse of the machines across the country, thus negatively affecting the functioning of courts.
Several competitive bidding processes were undertaken by the Department to appoint a service provider on a short-terms basis, but these were unsuccessful due to the responding bidder being unresponsive. The Department then approached National Treasury for assistance and was given permission to do a single source procurement.
The Department has not appointed the service provider in question as a sole-source service provider. However, the service provider was appointed effective 26 March 2022, using the single-source process in terms of National Treasury’s Supply Chain Management Instruction Note 03 of 2016/2017, with the concurrent approval of National Treasury. The appointment was for the maintenance and support of the CRT and Sexual Offences System (SOS), and the monetary value of the single-source process appointment was R26 220 000.00