The South African government’s lack of transparency into the digital TV migration process is once again stirring controversy, this time over the manufacture and supply of set-top boxes (STBs).
The Democratic Alliance’s shadow telecommunications and postal services minister, Marian Shinn, claimed to have uncovered a press release from Chinese telecommunications giant Shenzhen Skyworth Digital stating that it has, through “its factory in Johannesburg – co-owned by local company BUA Africa – successfully completed its first shipment, delivering a total of 70 000 set-top boxes (STBs) across South Africa”.
What’s in a name?
Shinn went on to point out that BUA Africa is not one of the 26 South African companies awarded a share of the R4,3 billion STB manufacturing and distribution tender, managed by the Universal Service and Access Agency of South Africa (USAASA), in April this year. “While BUA Africa did attend the 2 December 2014 mandatory briefing for companies interested in tendering, the company’s name is absent from the panel of winning company names that was briefly posted on USAASA’s website in April,” she stated.
“In the absence of any official release from USAASA or the Department of Communications on the placement of orders for STBs, I call on Minister of Communications, Faith Muthambi, who took charge of the Broadcast Digital Migration programme of which the STB tender is part, to urgently state if orders have been placed and, if so, with whom.
“According to BUA Africa Investments company records, the company was registered on 20 May 2014, so could have submitted a tender in its own name before the deadline of 6 January 2015. One of its three directors, Thulani Ngesi, is deputy CEO of Microtronix Manufacturing.
“Namec Microtronix was the only company to have been awarded a share of all four categories of products comprising the tender. Namec Microtronix has no registered company details. Microtronix attended the mandatory December 2014 briefing.”
USAASA responded by furnishing official documents showing that Namec Microtronix had properly registered its change of name to BUA Africa Investments in April 2015, and asserted that there is thus no validity to Shinn’s suspicions in this regard.
Who gets what?
In its formal response to what it described as Shinn casting “aspersions on the status of one of the companies that form part of the set-top box panel of preferred suppliers,” USAASA went on to cast doubt on her own motivations: “We are worried as the agency that there seem to be a malicious, unfortunately uncalculated effort by the same source to punch holes in a process that was clean, fair and objective[sic].
“First she manufactured a story that ‘some’ possible tenderers did not see the tender because it was advertised during the holiday season, by this she was trying to derail our efforts to migrate this country, now these lies.[sic] We see a behaviour from the same source where government is criticised for failure to migrate the country but at the same time, the same source looks for every excuse you can find to derail the migration, next she is expected to run to the Public Protector.[sic]”
For all its bluster, USAASA is staying mum on the very details that could put this whole matter to rest. It has not disclosed how it has allocated orders for the 5 million free STBs that have been promised to poor households, but its CEO Zami Nkosi has been quoted as saying that 1,5 million STBs have been ordered. In fact, it has failed to even formally reveal the names of the successful applicants.
ITWeb claims to have received confirmation from Nkosi that the only manufacturers to have been allocated a purchase order for STBs thus far are CZ Electronics, BUA Africa and Leratadima. It also quotes Muzi Makhaye, the CEO of ABT Africa, as saying his company was awarded a portion of the tender but has not received a manufacturing allocation.
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