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Durban - A tender for four mobile clinics in KwaZulu-Natal will end up costing taxpayers a "crazy" R61m - and only two of the units have been delivered.
Of that amount, R52m is being spent on leasing a truck and trailer that has a standard X-ray machine, which at the end of the three-year lease, the department will not even own.
Two companies - Mzansi Lifecare and Mobile Satellite Technologies (MST) - won the tenders.
The story caused an associate of Mzansi Lifecare to call a Sapa reporter and threaten to "deal with him personally" if he wrote the "wrong thing" about the tender.
These companies were meant to provide four mobile health units to the provincial health department. Only two were delivered and, by August 2016, they will have cost as much as R61m.
MST was asked to provide one unit, but won a tender to provide three units without knowing it.
"My stomach turns when I hear this. We only got an order for one unit.
We only supplied one unit," said MST chief executive Fernando Acafrao.
According to the Government Gazette of 21 June 2013, the Cape Town-based MST was to provide the KwaZulu-Natal health department with three vehicles - a mobile primary health care unit, a mobile school health unit, and a mobile dental and eye unit.
Johannesburg-based Mzansi Lifecare was to provide a mobile hospital unit.
The tender, ZNB 9281/2012-H, appears in a document entitled The Main Contract Register 20122013, found on the department's website. This register details what each company is to be paid and for what period.
The mobile school unit was billed at R4.6m. The primary health care unit and the dental and eye unit were listed as having cost the department R4.9m each.
3 vehicles
The problem with the MST portion of the tender is that MST did not know it had won the tender for three vehicles.
Acafrao said his company had only ever been asked to provide one vehicle, which was delivered in October 2013.
Acafrao said the unit had been sold to the department for R4.9m and that the department was paying about R100 000 a month to MST for the vehicle's operational costs over three years ending August 2016.
KwaZulu-Natal health spokesperson Sam Mkhwanazi said on Tuesday that the department had procured only two vehicles. The bus from MST, which he described as being the "School Health Team bus [eye, dental and Primary health care]" and the mobile hospital unit.
He confirmed the outright purchase of R4.9m and the R52.5m lease.
In its bid Mzansi Lifecare submitted two quotes for the mobile hospital unit, for R54m and R62.8m. The latter figure included staff.
The department, however, awarded it a tender for R52.5m.
A search on the Companies and Intellectual Properties Commission website revealed the company was registered on 29 May 2012, with Nandi Sakhile Msimang and Andrey Timshchenko as directors.
It was registered 17 days before the department published a request for information "for provision of universal mobile unit/s for provision of Integrated Health Services in KZN" in the Government Gazette of 15 June 2012.
On 2 August 2013, Dr Sibongile Zungu, the head of the KwaZulu-Natal health department, signed off on the tender, agreeing the department would pay Mzansi Lifecare R1.5m every month to lease the vehicle without staff.
It is not known how the bid evaluation committee and finally the bid adjudication committee reached the conclusion that Mzansi Lifecare's bid was the best one.
It is also not known how many companies submitted bids to provide the mobile hospital unit, or if in fact there were any other bidders apart from Mzansi Lifecare.
The company did not respond to questions from Sapa about its tax compliance certificate; or its broad-based black economic empowerment status. Sapa could not find copies of these certificates.
Mzansi Lifecare's vehicle was unveiled by KwaZulu-Natal Health MEC Sibongiseni Dhlomo last July.
The Newcastle Advertiser reported that at the event Dhlomo revealed the unit was one of four mobile hospitals the department planned on having. It was built by the Dutch company Lamboo Mobile Medical.
Wilfred van der Klauw, Lamboo's business development manager who attended the unveiling, said earlier this month his company had only supplied one vehicle to Mzansi Lifecare. He could not reveal for how much it was sold to Mzansi.
However, he provided detailed plans and pictures showing the vehicle's specifications.
Compare
To determine how much such a vehicle would cost, Sapa contacted a company not involved in the tender in any way and sent it the plans and pictures.
It was informed that the vehicle had cost the department $5.1m - the dollar value of the R52.5m lease at the time the award was published in the Government Gazette of 21 June. The company was not informed who had built the vehicle or who had been awarded the tender.
"That kind of money is crazy. If it cost that much, you already wasted four-and-a-half million [dollars]," was the reaction from Richard M Dinse, the vice president of LifeLine Mobile, a company based in the US state of Ohio that manufactures such vehicles.
After he had examined the pictures and the plan, Dinse wrote in an e-mail: "As I mentioned to you, I couldn't believe the amount charged for the three-year 'lease' of this medical unit.
"For the price they were charged, LifeLine could have delivered four identical vans to Durban. And, it wouldn't be on a lease agreement; they would own all four of the vans."
He said the company could supply a 12m-long vehicle with a comparable floor plan with an X-ray and ultrasound machine for about $1.1m (R12.5m at current exchange rate). That price, he said, would include a tent, training, and warranty costs.
"As I mentioned previously, this is the sale price, not a lease agreement," he said.
The mobile hospital, according to Mkhwanazi, is no longer in the Newcastle area, but currently being used in the eThewkini health district to "assist with addressing/improving the burden of diseases in relation to TB and HIV" in the district's informal settlements.
