Contractors take Sanral to court

MAINTENANCE EXPECTATIONS

- SIPHO JACK

A GROUP of seasoned maintenance contractors has filed an urgent application in the Pretoria High Court seeking to halt the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) from implementing its new national Routine Road Maintenance (RRM) contracts.

The service contracts relate to the maintenance of around 20,000 kilometres of the country's national roads. The affected contractors (the applicants) claimed that Sanral's tender awarding processes were fraught with flaws.

Therefore, they resorted to court action to interdict Sanral from concluding service level agreements with another conglomerate of contractors and to stop any maintenance work from commencing until a full judicial review is heard.

Included in the affected group of contractors were BCB Solutions and others, who were awarded the same contract over previous cycles.

Some of the assertions of the applicants included claims that the tender process was riddled with procedural and administrative irregularities, and that Sanral did not open the submitted bids publicly as required.

They contended that their current contract with Sanral, which ends this month, provides for an extension of the contract, but that option was not afforded to them. Instead, Sanral put out a new tender and has awarded the work to a group of 20 contractors that entered into a joint venture.