An empirical investigation into the tendering and procurement processes at the Mafikeng municipality in North West province

Abstract

Procurement, as a socio-economic policy in the current South African context, entails the addressing of the imbalances of the past, empowering disadvantaged communities, income generation, educating of the illiterate. In essence, the policy provides for the preference to be given to targeted categories of people, without exclusion of anyone from the opportunity to tendering this study an evaluation of tendering and procuring procedures in Mafikeng Local Municipality of the North West Province was conducted as there was no review done since 2005. Different literature was reviewed to find out what other researchers state about the related problem. It was found that tendering and procuring had an adverse effect in any business, in the best way to do it was to formulate and implement some guidelines, procedure and monitor them on a monthly base. Information was collected by distributing questionnaires to different employees of Mafikeng Local Municipality. The questionnaires were aimed at identifying important procedures of tendering and procuring, identifying different types of business and finding if employers and employees are informed about the tendering and procurement processes .. The findings indicate that almost all respondents 39 (91 %) agree on the value of the size of the company in the tendering and procurement process. According to the results, 40 (93%) agree that Small, Medium and Micro Enterprise cater for tendering and procurement in all aspects of supply chain management. In Mafikeng Local Municipality, Small, Medium and Micro Enterprise get preference to cater in all goods and services as compared to other enterprises. However, it was not clear for the respondents whether this preference given to Small, Medium MMEs addressed all problems related to unemployment, black economic and women empowerment. The majority (95%) do not think the tendering process is transparent. The transparency problem is a common challenge among municipalities and Mafikeng is not an exception.