Cape Town - The company blamed for halted construction at the Manenberg School of Skills has hit back at the Western Cape Education Department (WCED), accusing it of being dishonest about the real reason behind the delays.
The company, Furipoint (Pty) Ltd t/a Good Hope Construction, was responding to Education MEC David Maynier’s claim that the building project of the school was faced with another hurdle due to legal action over the tender award process leading to construction work being halted.
Last month, he said a “construction mafia” interrupted the R84-million project scheduled to take 87 weeks.
Maynier claimed work at the site was interrupted at the end of August by a group of individuals attempting to extort the appointed contractor. They apparently harassed, intimidated and threatened the contractors.
“A company that was not awarded the tender initiated an interdict and review application against the award of the tender contract.
Building of the school has been interdicted pending the hearing of the review application on November 24 by the Western Cape High Court.
The result is the community will, unfortunately, have to wait even longer for the school to be completed, and there will be a delay in us providing desperately needed School of Skills places in Manenberg,” said Maynier.
The School of Skills is expected to offer pupils who would potentially drop out of the mainstream academic curriculum the opportunity to pursue their own passion in a skills education environment.
Furipoint said the department decided to extend the period in replying to the urgent application brought before the High Court, and in doing so, requested a two-month timeline in order for their counsel to reply to the urgent court application and appear before the judge next month.
“Had the department come to court on the urgent basis, the matter would have been ruled upon already,” the company said.
Furipoint’s director, Nawaal Rajah, said the court action centred on the company’s belief that there were “certain material facts” misrepresented to the bid adjudication committee.
Rajah said the company currently working on the site was appointed over Furipoint, despite her company being the only 100% female black-owned 9GB construction firm in the Western Cape, with a more competitive bid price.
“Misrepresentations were made over their performance on previous projects, which set a false precedent that the company is “potentially a risk and not able to complete work on government projects”.
Due to a lack of mechanisms to challenge the tender process offered on Western Cape government tenders, Furipoint had been left with no option but to take the matter to court. “Western Cape government doesn’t have an appeal period to award tenders and this is a huge deterrent for bidders,” she said.
Cape Times