The Bulawayo City Council (BCC) has said the city vehicle parking management System tender awarded to Tendy Three Investments (Pty) Ltd is above board and due diligence of all processes was carried out.
This emerged at a stakeholders meeting on the parking project at the Large City Hall Friday, where residents demanded to know who Tendy Three is and what prior experience the company has.
Previously, BCC was tight-lipped about its partnership with Tendy Three with the local authority having been dragged to court by one of the bidders – Megalithic –for irregularly cancelling its tender.
Town Clerk, Christopher Dube, underscored there was nothing amiss in Tendy Three’s deal.
“First, we placed an advert in expression of interest to all those involved in parking management. We received 10 respondents and we zeroed down to this one. All the respondents mentioned how much they expected to collect, how much they wanted to invest and how much time they wanted to be with us for the partnership,” he said.
“Tendy Three indicated they wanted a 70 percent to 30 percent ratio in terms of revenue meaning they will collect 70 percent of revenue while BCC will collect 30 percent. The reason for this was the company will invest US$2.2 million.”
After going through its projections, Dube said Tendy Three indicated it would be able to raise back its US$2.2 million investment in six years.
“Council also projected raising at least US$1 million annually after taking out all other expenses in managing the parking system. Tendy Three then settled for six years in which they will be able to recoup their investment,” he said.
“When this partnership was sent to the Zimbabwe Investment and Development Agency ZIDA (ZIDA) for further scrutiny, Tendy Three was asked to look at the IT side in three years, that’s why there will be a further four year period in which we can extend the project.”
The town clerk acknowledged that some people could question the 70 to 30 percent ratio but pointed out it was a fair deal.
“I know on the face of the 70: 30 ratio people will talk and say all the money is gone. No it’s not gone, they have to get back their money. Tendy Three will be managing and ours is to just get 30 percent. When we make our own calculations the money we are getting now from this contract will be far much more,” Dube said.
Tendy Three’s Operations Manager, Lizwe Mabuza, declared the city would not be involved in incurring the cost to run this project.
“That’s why we wanted to keep it as clean as possible. So if you say 70: 30 percent is on the top line, it is 30 cents of every dollar. Don’t take the remaining 70 percent as profit for Tendy Three. There are expenses to run the project, salaries to think about, software and hardware costs which we are going to incur,” he explained.
“Let’s not misconstrue the 70: 30 to say council is on the bottom line. You might find that we are almost at 50: 50. We are taking care of expenses from that 70 percent.”
Mabuza emphasised that proper tender procedures were done, as it would be reckless for BCC to do such a project without vetting who is carrying it out.
“This vetting is not only by the city council, ZIDA was also involved and the tender went through the joint venture committee and an inter-ministerial committee composed of permanent secretaries of different ministries, from which it went to cabinet. If this was not checked thoroughly there would be a problem,” he said.
The operations manager claimed Tendy Three was competent enough to carry out the parking system.
“One of our clients is Pal in Cape Town. We are in the business, we are talking about what we are doing. Go to the website and check who Tendy Three is, parking management is one of other business activities we do. We work with municipalities a lot in South Africa – City of Ekurhuleni, City of Johannesburg, City of Cape Town and we are rendering services to municipalities. One of them being refuse removal, through compactor trucks and skipper loaders. It’s what we do.” Mabuza said.
“We are also in debt collection and revenue optimisation. The City of Johannesburg is on our panel, we are now optimising their revenues in terms of how they can collect rates and taxes. We are a company that focuses on bringing solutions for municipalities – go to Seapoint and Claremont in Cape Town.”
Mabuza urged Bulawayo residents to have trust and understanding of the vetting process that took place prior.
“We are here not to come and experiment with you. Give us the benefit of the doubt and see if we will implement what we are talking about. We promised to offer and we didn’t come here to play,” he said.
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