A gas explosion damaged about five blocks of Bree Street in the Joburg CBD in July 2023. Picture: Timothy Bernard / Independent Newspapers
The Bree street, now called Lilian Ngoyi Street rehabilitation project, has hit another snag after the Johannesburg Road Agency (JRA) fired the contractor meant to restore the road to normality.
Riddled with failure to meet several contractual obligations including having been awarded the nearly R200 million tender despite the contractor having been alleged to have defrauded City Power of R94 million, Step Up Engineering’s contract was terminated earlier this month.
This is expected to cause rehabilitation delays despite the December deadline.
Now the DA in Johannesburg has called on the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) to look into what seems to be the latest scandal to rock the City of Johannesburg.
The party’s MPL Belinda Kayser-Echeozonjoku accused newly elected mayor Dada Morero, who is from the ANC, of dragging his feet on the matter despite having been recently elected after Kabelo Gwamanda resigned.
Despite the party and the ANC having forged the Government of National Unity (GNU) on national level, the two main parties have not seen eye-to-eye provincially and in local government ahead of the 2026 municipal elections.
“The current administration is seemingly hell-bent on running Johannesburg into the ground at the expense of residents. The R200 million tender to repair the Lilian Ngoyi Street explosion site, was awarded to a company already on trial for defrauding City Power of R94 million.
“Evidently it was not enough to preside over R94 million worth of fraud, the administration believes that another R200 million will do the trick.
“We are now, more so than ever before, taking the new Executive Mayor Dada Morero’s word – we should not expect any major change under his leadership.
She said on the back of the scandal Morero was looking for R2 billion to ensure service delivery in the city.
Morero has been under fire after he faced criticism for proposing that employing foreign nationals as metro police officers would help overcome language barriers in the fight against crime.
“The same executive who squandered hundreds of millions, wants R2 billion more… Whilst we are relieved that the city terminated the contract for the Lilian Ngoyi Street repairs, without suitable consequence management this means nothing.”
She further requested that Morero produces a comprehensive list of all projects that the accused company was working on in the city.
Other requests were for Morero to provide which of those projects were completed by the company, who the directors were, who are the officials that sat on the bid adjudication committee and awarded this tender and what consequences there would be for those guilty of this gross financial mismanagement.
In addition, the DA also requested for the company to be blacklisted from doing business with the government.
“The DA has also written to the SIU requesting that all government contracts this company has entered into across the country be investigated… Our request includes the investigation of the directors. We included this specific request because there exists a pattern where the same directors are shifted around, and company names are changed to facilitate their looting of state coffers. The result being the same people in charge of millions of rands with a history of uncompleted projects under their belt,” she said.
Responding to questions sent by The Star to the mayor’s office, spokesperson Chris Vondo referred the publication to the Joburg Roads Agency (JRA).
In a statement, the entity confirmed that Step Up Engineering was terminated and were in a process of appointing another contractor.
“The JRA is in the process of appointing a new contractor to undertake the rehabilitation project of Lilian Ngoyi Street… The rehabilitation of the Lilian Ngoyi (formerly Bree) Street project in the inner city incurred delays due to the contractor’s failure to meet several contractual obligations.
“The JRA undertook several interventions to hold the contractor accountable and ensure the project remains on track including letters issued by the JRA and CoJ,” the statement read.
JRA Acting CEO, Lufuno Mashau, said: “JRA is sensitive to the impact this sectional closure of Lilian Ngoyi Street (between Harrison and Wanderers Streets) has on road users, business owners, residents, and other stakeholders, and consequently we are taking swift action to ensure the quick resumption of construction through the appointment of a new contractor to prevent any further unnecessary delays and inconvenience to the public.”
The Star
mashudu.sadike@inl.co.za