More questions than answers over delayed foreshore project
City official cites confidentiality when grilled by councillors
Plans to develop Cape Townâs unfinished freeways on the foreshore are delayed. A bid evaluation committee had to evaluate six proposals, but the committee has been scrapped in controversial circumstances. The reasons for the delays remain unclear after Melissa Whitehead, Commissioner for the Cityâs Transport and Urban Development Authority, responded opaquely to questions on Thursday.
Whitehead said there was a deadlock over âscoring methodologyâ. She was being questioned by opposition councillors during a portfolio committee meeting on Thursday.
The unfinished highways are known colloquially as âSollyâs Follyâ after Solly Morris. He was the City engineer in the 1970s at the time they were built and then scrapped midway (see this IOL article).
The development of the Foreshore Freeway Precinct is part of the Cityâs âurban catalytic investmentâ. The six rival proposals were unveiled with fanfare and displayed at the civic centre in March this year. You can see presentations of the proposals on Youtube.
At the time, Transport and Urban Development Mayco Member Brett Herron stated that the development of the six hectare strip of prime land was âa once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape one of the most valuable, vital and iconic precincts in the Mother Cityâ.
Development proposals had to address traffic congestion and the provision of affordable housing, as well as âleave us with a lasting legacyâ, said Herron.
The developers behind the proposals were kept under wraps, and the bid evaluation committee was supposed to announce the winning bid by the end of July.
However, August and September came and went, and the bidders wondered what was happening. They received a letter from City Manager Achmat Ebrahim stating he had reconstituted the bid evaluation committee as he had âdeveloped some discomfortâ with the committeeâs composition and process.
Whitehead was a member of the bid evaluation committee but was removed. So was the newly appointed director of urban catalytic investments, Frank Cummings, who was controversially fired on 11 October at the end of his initial six-month probation period.
A Sunday Times article, Tender wrangle puts brakes on âfreeways to nowhereâ dream, published on 28 October, states that two sources âwith intimate knowledge of the committeeâs workâ said the bid committee was scrapped because Whitehead âclearly favoured a particularâ bid. It claims she used threats and coercion to get bid committee members to support her choice.
ANC councillors in the Transport and Urban Development Portfolio Committee demanded answers to these allegations. Whitehead responded that supply chain management procedures bound her to confidentiality. All she could say about the scrapping of the initial bid evaluation committee was that âit was a process in relation to the methodology of the scoring which was primarily the issueâ.
Councillor Charlotte Heynes asked why not a cent had been spent of the R1.5 million urban catalytic investment capital expenditure budgeted for this financial year. Whitehead replied that the Foreshore freeway project had been held up as âunfortunately thereâs been a problem due to the non performance of the director (Cummings) during his probation period and his service was terminatedâ.
However, she later backtracked when councillor Wela Dlulane said if Cummingsâs dismissal was the reason for the delay of the Foreshore project, she should provide âclear reasonsâ why he was fired.
She then denied earlier stating Cummingsâs departure had delayed the project. Rather, he was fired for non-performance on other urban catalytic projects.
She said she did not want to discuss his dismissal further as it was âsensitive human resource informationâ. But she said it was not linked to delays on the Foreshore project.
âThe issue with regards to the BEC [bid evaluation committee] was a different process. The individual concerned was on the BEC, that is correct, just as much as I was ⌠and the City Manager took it upon himself to reconstitute the BEC.â
As for allegations of her influencing the BEC, she said she had written a report to the City Manager. But, she claimed, if she disclosed the contents of her report she would be breaking supply chain management processes of the City, even though she was no longer on the bid committee.
She said the new committee was âon trackâ and the winning bid would be announced at the end of this month.
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