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A former senior health department official and five family members implicated in tender fraud related to the renovation of public hospitals in the Northern Cape were released on bail after appearing in court on Tuesday.
All six were arrested by the Hawks that same day.
Godfrey Moncho was deputy director of plant engineering and also a project manager in the infrastructure department. He appeared in court with Valentia Motlhanke, Maclean Motlhanke, Tshepo Timothy Motlhanke, Millicent Motlhanke, and Nthabiseng Sekute.
The defendants, and companies related to them, were charged with 22 counts of fraud related to renovations at three public hospitals, said the spokesman for the National Prosecution Authority (NPA), Sipho Ngwema. The matter relates to contracts worth R10 million that were issued for renovations between July 2014 and June 2015 at the West End Specialized Hospital and Kuruman and Kimberley Hospitals.
The contract amounts were below R500,000, and as a result, the provincial health department did not hold an open tender, but service providers were invited to submit written quotes. However, supply chain processes were undermined in the selection process, Ngwema said.
Moncho was not in the supply chain management unit of the health department, but during relevant instances of the case, he allegedly obtained quotes from service providers.
The service providers allegedly cited to exclude competition and the directors did not state that they were relatives or how they were related to Moncho. In some of the hospitals, they allegedly did not provide all the services claimed and were paid for the entire contract.
In one case, a company claimed to have installed vinyl sheets at Kuruman Hospital and an investigation revealed that this did not happen.
The defendants were granted bail of 10,000 rand and the matter was postponed until February 2021.
TimesLIVE
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