N3 Toll Route SANRAL's return to open tenders will improve transparency while ensuring the country's national road network continued to receive routine maintenance.
The South African National Roads Agency (SANRAL) has scrapped its controversial contractor panel procurement model after the High Court declared its routine road maintenance tender process unlawful, marking the latest in a string of procurement-related legal setbacks for the roads agency.
The Gauteng High Court in Pretoria declared SANRAL's decision to award Routine Road Maintenance (RRM) contracts to a panel of 20 companies "unconstitutional and unlawful" and set the decision aside following separate applications by BCB Solutions and Botle Ba Afrika Roads, SANRAL said in a statement.
In that ruling, SANRAL was found to be deficient in providing documents within a requested time frame, even though it had been ordered to do so by two judges. Even though SANRAL furnished some documents related to the tender, these were considered to be “disorganised, incomplete, partially inaccessible, and materially deficient,” the ruling quotes the applicants as saying.
“The applicants also say that a significant number of these documents was missing and portions of some of them were redacted without an explanation. There is no need for the redaction of any part of the documents as no confidential price information is included in the bid documents,” the judge wrote.
