•  December 2000February 2001 Local News Headlines

Wednesday, February 28, 2001 - Web posted at 8:43:24 AM GMT

Govt official's dodgy tender deal in court
WERNER MENGES

CLAIMS that a senior official in the Office of the Prime Minister attempted to manipulate the awarding of a State pension delivery contract so that his company would pocket some N$11 million without doing any work took centre stage in the High Court in Windhoek yesterday.

Documents before the court indicated that tenderer Ewe Enterprises CC offered to withdraw from the tender process if another company - Cash Paymaster Services - paid Ewe more than N$3 million a year.

Had Ewe's plan succeeded, Government would have had to pay almost N$5 million a year more for the distribution of State pensions than it was initially set to do.

Ewe Enterprises CC would in the mean time have earned N$3,786 million a year, or N$11,36 million over the contract's three-year period, for making way for the second lowest tenderer and then doing nothing more.

The proposal from Ewe Enterprises CC to former State pension distribution contract holders Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) is signed by George Simataa, Under Secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister, and businessman Immanuel Dumeni, a former Under Secretary of Cabinet.

It forms part of the record of the High Court case challenging the award of the tender for three years, which runs to the end of March 2002, to United Africa (Namibia).

The letter sets out the offer by Ewe to withdraw their lowest tender for the pensions contract, leaving CPS as a shoo-in for the job, in return for Ewe Enterprises CC being paid N$315 560 a month, or N$3 786 720 a year, "as commission for this understanding".

Instead of accepting the April 29 1999 offer, Cash Paymaster Services blew the whistle on Ewe, denying that it ever had an understanding to provide the pension delivery services on behalf of Ewe and informing the Tender Board and the Ministry of Health and Social Services of the proposal.

Simataa's role in Ewe and involvement in the offer had further repercussions when the Tender Board called for the advice of Government Attorney Vicki Erenstein ya Toivo on the issue.

She recommended that Simataa's role in the matter be brought to the attention of the Deputy Secretary to Cabinet for possible disciplinary action, and that the Prosecutor General also be approached to investigate whether Ewe's proposal to CPS constituted a crime.

She further recommended that the pensions delivery contract not be awarded to the lowest bidder in the second round of the pensions tender process, JMS Investments CC, because of the claimed involvement of Simataa and Dumeni with that tenderer.

Claims about the involvement of Simataa and Dumeni with JMS, whose sole member is Manfred Namaseb, are based on events such as * Simataa having accompanied Namaseb to a meeting with former Attorney General Vekuii Rukoro in mid-1999 to complain about the Tender Board's handling of the pension delivery tender* Dumeni having accompanied Namaseb to a briefing session about the JMS tender at the Health Ministry in July 1999* Both Dumeni and Simataa having approached a local business with Namaseb to enquire about information technology support for the pension pay-out contract.

Yesterday Reinhard Toetemeyer, the lawyer representing JMS Investments CC, devoted a major part of his arguments before Judge Sylvester Mainga to attacking the four-year blacklisting of JMS by the Tender Board that followed the emergence of the alleged ties between Namaseb and Ewe or Simataa and Dumeni.

JMS Investments was excluded from all Government tenders for four years as a result of the alleged links.

While admitting that he knows and is personal friends with the members of Ewe Enterprises CC, Namaseb distanced himself from Ewe, its business and its members.

Toetemeyer charged that the Tender Board, acting "behind a veil of secrecy", had committed a fatal error by not giving JMS a chance to answer to the allegations of its association with Ewe before a decision was taken to blacklist JMS.

No matter what JMS's response to the questions about its alleged ties with Ewe's principals might have been, the mere fact that it was never given a chance to respond to those means that it was denied administrative justice - with the result that the subsequent tender award to United Africa (Namibia) had to be set aside, Toetemeyer said.

Dr Pieter Henning, SC, representing Cash Paymaster Services with the assistance of Albert Strydom, is set to continue today with arguments attacking the decision not to award the contract to his client.

The Tender Board is represented by Erenstein ya Toivo.

Dave Smuts is acting for United Africa (Namibia).

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