More on the Ballistic Durban Website
Extracted from IOL and a little old but it serves to demonstrate the peevish nature of Durban’s Town Clerk. However, I’m glad that someone is getting stuck into this bunch of congenital incompetents.
DA shoots from hip and Durban boss detonates
July 3, 2009
Perhaps it was a hastily written statement, but comments made this week by the DA have outraged Durban city manager Michael Sutcliffe. Marti Wenger, the DA’s deputy shadow minister of co-operative governance and traditional affairs, called for an investigation of the tender process for the Durban City Council’s World Cup website, which had been awarded to a black economic empowerment company at a staggering cost.
Sutcliffe said he would not investigate how the contract was awarded, as the only reason the DA wanted it probed was because the work was being done by a black-owned, black-run company. “It’s downright racist, and you can quote me on that.”
There are question marks over the cost of developing and managing the website, which information technology (IT) experts say is outrageously expensive at R6.5 million. The city says the budget is for a host of work to be done to develop an information portal for Durban.
The verdict on whether this portal is worth the price is likely to be delivered only once it is fully functional, with all the bells and whistles the council claims it will have.
But the DA statement offers illuminating insight into how the party works.
When questioned in more detail on the allegations, Wenger did not seem to have all the facts at hand, which suggests the statement was hastily put together simply to generate airtime for the DA.
So is the hullabaloo just politicking, or has taxpayers’ money been misspent?