Hawks to probe mobile hospital tender
A controversial R61 million tender that saw the KZN health department lease a mobile clinic unit for R52.5 million is being investigated by the Hawks.
|||Durban – A controversial R61 million tender that saw the KwaZulu-Natal health department lease a mobile clinic unit for R52.5 million is being investigated by the Hawks.
Despite the investigation, the department’s latest annual financial statements (AFS) for 2014/15 state that negotiations are underway to purchase the mobile clinic, which is a truck and trailer that has a standard X-ray machine.
The AFS, a copy of which was obtained by ANA earlier this week on Tuesday when the provincial standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) interrogated the department over irregular spending of R679 million.
According to page 345 of the AFS: “Goods and services over expenditure was due to pressures from payment of accruals from 2013/14, the lease of the Universal Mobile Hospital Unit which was more costly than anticipated (the department is currently engaging with the supplier to purchase the unit)…”
Asked about the intended purchase of the mobile clinic and how much it would cost, department spokesman Sam Mkhwanazi said: “The matter of leasing of the Universal Mobile Hospital mentioned on page 345 of the KZN department of health annual report for the financial year 2014/15, and referred to in your query, is currently under investigation by the Serious Economic Offenses Unit of the Directorate For Priority Crime Investigation. To this end, the department is unable to comment as this might interfere with the investigation.”
The R61 million tender, ZNB 9281/2012-H, made headlines earlier in January this year when it emerged that the company, Mzansi Lifecare, which had won the tender for the R52.5 million lease, was created only 17 days before the tender was announced in the Government Gazette in June 2012.
Former head of the KwaZulu-Natal health department Dr Sibongile Zungu signed off on the lease in August 2013, agreeing the department would pay Mzansi Lifecare R1.5m every month until August 2016 to lease the vehicle without staff.
Comment could not be immediately obtained from either the Hawks spokesman Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi or Mzansi Lifecare.
When the tender made headlines in January, it emerged that the department could have purchased outright four similar units from the United States.
“That kind of money is crazy. If it cost that much, you already wasted four-and-a-half million (dollars),” was the reaction from Richard M Dinse, vice president of LifeLine Mobile, a company based in the US state of Ohio that manufactures such vehicles.
“For the price they were charged, LifeLine could have delivered four identical vans to Durban. And, it wouldn’t be on a lease agreement; they would own all four of the vans.”
He said the company could supply a 12 metre vehicle with a comparable floor plan with an X-ray and ultrasound machine for about US1.1 million (about R12.5 million). That price, he said, would include a tent, training, and warranty costs.
African News Agency
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