The City of Cape Town has admitted to a major setback in the maintenance and upgrading of roads that has resulted in a "city of potholes".
The city says R3-million has been unspent so far because of "appeals" against black economic empowerment companies getting contracts.
But the Democratic Alliance says the tender and procurement committee "messed up with the award of the annual tender for resealing and rehabilitation work" - turning Cape Town into "a city full of potholes".
A Cape Argus inspection of city roads found numerous potholes. We watched as motorists threaded their way gingerly around the pitfalls.
Frank van der Velde, spokesperson for the mayoral committee member for roads, transport and stormwater, Danile Landingwe, said contracts for R30-million had been the subject of appeals, causing delays in maintenance being carried out on the city's roads.
Van der Velde said although the highways were "not so bad", in some cases, especially in the "inner-city roads", the maintenance "is not what we'd like to see".
He said Landingwe had "unashamedly prioritised" township roads and the city was doing "major work" in these areas.
Van der Velde took the Cape Argus through the portfolio's budget of R675-million and said there would be a strong focus on the public transport system to get people to move away from using their cars to get to work.
DA councillor Felicity Purchase, who sits on the city's roads and transport portfolio committee, alleged the directorate had failed to deliver on its budget.
"The city's roads are in the worst state they have ever been in. Over the past years, the necessary money needed for the maintenance of our roads has been drastically cut."
"So much so that we are still working on an old management systems report, as we have not had money to pay consultants to update the State of the Roads Report."
"This year the ANC tender and procurement committee messed up with the award of the annual tender for resealing and rehabilitation work on our roads."
"The tenders were for about R55-million operating budget and R30-million for capital projects."
Purchase said this tender allowed for a continuing programme of maintenance to prevent "just the situation we are in today".
"The committee gave the tender to a BEE company which did not have the equipment, competence or the experience to deal with a contract of this nature."
"Traditionally we take the lump-sum contract amount and divide it fairly among the competent contractors."
"The big contractors appealed the decision to award the tender to a BEE firm. It took the appeal committee three months to review the decision."
"It was found to be a wrong decision and the secretariat had to re-table the item for approval. This was only done on April 25."
She said by then the successful tenderers had left the Western Cape to work in other provinces.
"We are also now in our winter wet season and cannot work on any major resealing in this weather. We are now at the end of our financial year with little or no work having been done. So the result is a city full of potholes." - Staff Writer