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Thandeka Moyo Court Reporter
BULAWAYO City Council yesterday lost its two-year-long bid to cancel a parking management system tender worth millions of dollars that initially had been won by a local company, Megalithic Marketing Private Limited.

High Court Judge, Justice Lawrence Kamocha, ordered the council to award the tender to the company within 14 days of service.

Megalithic Marketing Private Limited is owned by local businessman Charles Musema.

The local authority cancelled the tender in 2012 claiming that the process that saw Megalithic Marketing Private Limited awarded the tender was flawed and full of irregularities.

Musema, who is the director of the company, was only notified through a newspaper article published in February 2012 reporting that both his company and another competitor had been disqualified.

He also learnt through the same article that the municipality was going to re-advertise the tender.

Justice Kamocha yesterday ruled in favour of Megalithic Marketing Private Limited.

He said the decision by the city council to retender was unacceptable.

“It’s ordered that the decision by the City of Bulawayo to disqualify Megalithic Marketing Private Limited as the tenderer is hereby set aside. The council must grant the company the contract for the parking management system for the City of Bulawayo within 14 days of service,” said Justice Kamocha.

In June 2012, Musema through his lawyer Sindiso Mazibisa of Cheda and Partners, made a court application for review as he argued that his disqualification was without lawful cause.

“On November 8, the City of Bulawayo ran adverts in different newspapers that circulate in the city inviting tenders for a parking management system for the City.

“Our client responded to the advert on time and paid $60 for documents, attended the compulsory tender briefing and finally submitted the tender documents on time,” said Mazibisa.

“The tender board sat and adjudicated on the bids and agreed that our client had scored highly and he was recommended as the winner.”

Mazibisa said his client was shocked when he read the article saying he was disqualified because his company was linked to the director of engineering services, Engineer Simela Dube.

“No official communication was made to our client of the rejection of the bid and Eng Dube had recused himself from the adjudicating process as he’s personally known to Musema,” he said.

The company had pledged to inject $3 million into the project of improving the city parking system and that the project would help the financially strained local authority generate about $30 million in revenue.

Most motorists are parking in the Central Business District for free.

In her response to the application, the council chamber secretary Sikhangele Zhou stated the local authority had resolved to stand by its previous decision.

“The process of awarding Megalithic Marketing Private Limited the tender was flawed with irregularities. The director of engineering services had only declared interest once instead of twice and the matter was of public interest thus the need to be handled with caution,” she said.

“I’ve read the court application for review which is misconceived and it lacks merit. The applicant failed to appreciate the effect of the tender documents that led to our decision.”

She also said that council was not obliged to accept any tender or the recommendation of the Municipal Procurement Board.

“The fact that anyone was the highest bidder does not oblige us to accept the tender. Those were the terms upon which we were willing to do business with the tenderers and the same terms used by the company in submitting its application,” said Zhou.