The Western Cape government wants urgent consultations to take place with provinces and municipalities on constitutional and other concerns over the newly signed Public Procurement Act.
The new law, which was signed by President Cyril Ramaphosa last week, seeks to regulate public procurement and prescribes a single framework for implementation of preferential procurement by state organs.
Premier Alan Winde and Finance MEC Deidre Baartman have written to Ramaphosa raising serious concerns over the constitutionality of the new law.
“We firmly believe that the act in its current form does not pass constitutional muster as it usurps the autonomy of provinces and municipalities in adopting their own preferential procurement policies,” Winde said.
In a letter to Ramaphosa, Winde and Baartman said the Constitution envisages that organs of state have the discretion to decide whether to adopt a preferential procurement policy.
They said the new law was the national government drafting policy and usurped the autonomy of organs of state instead of providing a framework.
The Western Cape government has asked for urgent consultations with provinces and municipalities regarding constitutional and other concerns with the act.
They say the new law should not be brought into operation until their concerns have been resolved.
“The act will impose significant costs on the procurement process as well add to the administrative burden involved in procurement – it will be a handbrake on all systems and processes. This in turn will impact service delivery at a time when we as the provincial government are doing everything, we can to improve services for our residents,” Winde said.
According to the Western Cape government, the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) failed to comply with their constitutionally imposed duties in the passing the new law.
“The process followed in drafting the legislation was woefully inadequate and, by National Treasury’s own admission, did not consider all public input, nor was the public given all relevant information on which to engage,” Baartman said.
The Western Cape government cited several grounds that Parliament failed to comply with constitutional requirements, including that periods provided by the relevant parliamentary committees to comment on the draft legislation being “too short”, that the National Assembly nor the NCOP adequately assessed the financial implications of the bill and the bill adopted in the National Assembly was substantively different to the one the NCOP took to the public.
Cape Times