GEORGE NEWS - The Garden Route District Municipality has rejected the Good Party’s claim that the repeated use of procurement deviations is becoming “a system rather than an exception”, pointing to figures showing that deviations accounted for only 56 of about 3 094 purchases made during the 2025/26 financial year.
GRDM Mayoral Committee chairperson for Financial Services, Dave Swart, said the figures meant only about 1.8% of purchases involved deviations during the year.
“I would therefore argue that Good’s statement that deviations are ‘becoming a system rather than an exception’ is completely inappropriate and unfounded,” Swart said.
Good’s Garden Route District Municipality Councillor, Rosa Louw, raised the concern during the 31 August council meeting.
However, she referred to George Municipality in her statement to the media, and lodged her concerns over deviations of more than R1m a month.
Good Councillor Rosa Louw
What is a procurement deviation?
A procurement deviation allows a municipality to, under specific circumstances, appoint a supplier without following its normal competitive procurement process. Good argues that deviations should be used only in exceptional circumstances and not to compensate for poor planning.
Louw said repeated deviations could reduce competition, potentially lead to higher prices and create opportunities for corruption and cronyism.
Good has called for deviations above R200 000 to be separately motivated to Council, including reasons why normal procurement could not be followed, and referred to the Municipal Public Accounts Committee (MPAC).
Swart rejected the suggestion that the use of deviations in itself indicated wrongdoing.
“Deviations in terms of Section 36 of the Supply Chain Management Regulations is a legal procurement process guided by strict National Treasury circulars, policies and procedures,” he said.
He stressed that a deviation does not automatically constitute irregular expenditure or mean procurement rules have been unlawfully bypassed.
Procurement situation
Meanwhile, GRDM says its procurement situation is unlikely to change in the immediate future because of uncertainty around National Treasury’s updates to the Municipal Standard Chart of Accounts (mSCOA).
CFO Rian Boshoff explained that the regulations determine which financial systems the municipality may procure.
The current mSCOA Version 7.1 applies to the 2026/27 financial year and affects computerised systems used, for example, financial management, payroll and performance management.
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