City of Cape Town takes Procurement Bill fight to ConCourt

[file photo] The City of Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis.

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The City of Cape Town has confirmed that it is approaching the Constitutional Court to challenge the validity of the Public Procurement Act.

According to the City, the Bill threatens to delay the delivery of essential services and undermine the constitutional autonomy of local government.

The Bill empowers provincial treasuries and the newly created national Public Procurement Office to intervene directly in the awarding of municipal contracts.

Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis says the Bill has been rushed and public consultation processes have been flawed.

“The most frustrating thing in government is how long it takes to get anything procured. If you want to do something really valuable and useful for the public, it’s a minimum of a year. These risks actually making that even longer and slower. The problem is that, as always, with almost every rule, the person who wants to break the rule will find a new way around it. And the rest of us will have to just comply and comply at greater cost, and that’s with more time cost as well.”