The Maputo City Council has ordered the cancellation of a public tender, actually a direct award, for the painting of a Municipal Police vehicle to escort the Mayor, Rasaque Manhique.

The cancellation order followed a wave of social indignation for allocating almost 300,000 meticais to paint the Isuzu 4×4 AHS-770-MP. The reason for the decision was financial.

The public tender was published five months after the direct award, in February of this year, to the company Karam Car, LDA, without the Mayor's knowledge.

"This situation was not known to the president of the Municipal Council, and it couldn't reach him because it was happening in other units. Therefore, he was not the person who signed the contract," said the Municipal Secretary of Maputo City, Euclides Rangel, at a press conference today.

The CMCM recognizes that there were irregularities in this process, as well as the lack of need to allocate such a large sum of money to paint a car.

"When there's an order to cancel the tender, it's when the City Council realizes that, when it investigates the situation, we weren't actually dealing with a direct award or a contract for the provision of services. It was an act on the part of the police command of the employees who were initiating this process to regularize, after all, an act that had already taken place in February. Therefore, at that time, the painting had already been carried out and payment had been made," said Euclides Rangel.

He said that these were the reasons that led to the investigations, as it was clear that there had been violations of public procurement rules and procedures in this case. He added that this case will evolve into administrative measures for proper accountability.

The direct award was made by the municipal police command because the procurement management sub-units were dispersed and escaped central control.

"For this reason, one of the decisions was to eliminate all the procurement management sub-units at the level of the different organic units, with the City Council having only one central unit and some in the municipal districts, since there is a territory," he explained. (Source: STV)