Chairperson, at the moment there is no legislation which debars public servants from participating in the tender process, other than the Provincial Finance Management Act. At local government level, the Municipal Finance Management Act directs municipalities to craft regulations that would debar councillors and their spouses from tendering or conducting any form of business or trade with that particular municipality.
Unfortunately, this is one of the occasions where a good intention has not been actualised because the mechanism to follow through on it is not in place. Many of the municipalities have not actually come up with such regulations. Of course, in practice, nothing stops councillors from one municipality who have companies from directing their own companies to tender for contracts with another municipality in another province. These are reciprocated, as it were. It is these insidious activities that the review would also look at, to see how we can ensure that we stamp out this practice of insider trading, because that is essentially what it is.
It is of course, by law, an offence to tamper with tender processes. If it is found that an official who stands to benefit, or whose relatives stand to benefit, tampered with tender processes, charges can be preferred against such a person and, once convicted, their assets can be impounded. So those would be the consequences.