The National Roads Agency of South Africa (Sanral) has moved to stopper the gaps in its board sub-committees to ensure continued effective governance and operational control.
In a move seen as a response to the numerous legal challenges brought by construction companies last year over the agency’s Preferential Procurement Policy (PPP) instituted in May and withdrawn in October, Sanral said yesterday it had made appointments to some of the sub-committees including the Audit and Risk Committee.
It said given that the Board faced challenges in maintaining the required composition of key sub-committees, specifically the Audit and Risk Committee (ARC) and the Contracts Committee (CC), these committees could not meet their regulatory and operational requirements in terms of their respective charters.
In a Stock Exchange News Service announcement, Sanral said it had appointed Refilwe Buthelezi to chair the ARC while Thamsanqa Matosa and Rob Haswell would continue as members of the ARC and that an adviser, who will be a qualified and experienced chartered accountant, will be appointed to assist the ARC within the next 14 days.
Sanral said the Social, Ethics, and Transformation Committee (SETC) would continue to operate with Matosa and Haswell as members and Buthelezi will join SETC.
It said due to regulatory constraints that prevent members of ARC from serving on the CC, the CC would be suspended and matters usually handled by the CC will be directed to the full Board until further notice.
Similarly, the Assets and Liabilities Committee (ALCO) would be suspended, with its responsibilities also being handled by the Board temporarily.
It said to mitigate the impact of the suspension of CC and ALCO, Errol Makhubela had been appointed as an Adviser to the Board, specifically on matters related to ALCO and CC due to his extensive experience and prior service on the Board.
“The Board believes that this reconstitution will ensure that Sanral continues to operate within the legal framework and maintains its governance standards. We are committed to filling the vacancies promptly to restore full functionality to all board sub-committees. Further announcements will be made when the vacancies have been filled,” it said.
The organisation for Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa), which has running battles with Sanral over the execution of tender processes and recently won a challenge to overturn the operation of e-toll gantries in Gauteng, said Sanral had appeared to be somewhat constrained in its governance and oversight when it came to its capital expenditure projects and other big spend categories.
Outa CEO Wayne Duvenage said, “We believe that Sanral’s operations have been negatively impacted by these board vacancies and past inefficient structures, along with past board members that may have been politically compromised or reluctant to challenge obvious and glaring matters that needed challenging,” he added.
Duvenage said it could only be hoped that the announcement and the actions being taken are the start of improved governance and greater efficiencies within Sanral.
Outa said it had raised several concerns and requests for information through the Promotion of Access to Information Act process with Sanral over a number of years, but had never received satisfactory or timeous responses.
Outa has contested the awarding of a R4.7 billion project in KwaZulu-Natal to Aqua Transport.
Duvenage said, “We were ignored or largely fobbed off. We also raised our concerns as to why Sanral had outsourced their tenders and bid adjudication process to the SA Development Bank two years ago, which is a competence and responsibility which they have always had and nurtured, but had appeared to have lost control of.”
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