The City of Cape Town notes the SIU’s finding in relation to expenditure on infrastructure for the Strandfontein site to shelter homeless persons during the first Covid-19 lockdown. Various departments within the City cooperated fully with the SIU’s investigation into this matter. The City has already made full public disclosure of all Covid-19 related expenditure, publishing this online in August 2020.

The City has not yet received the detailed SIU report, and will study this in detail once received. If there is any evidence of wrongdoing, the City will not hesitate in taking action against those responsible.

The City’s emergency procurement process was conducted in terms of Supply Chain Management Policy, the National Treasury Emergency Procurement Guidelines, and the Municipal Finance Management Act.

Emergency procurement processes were followed in order to comply with the extremely tight deadlines – a matter of days – imposed by the Alert Level 5 lockdown regulations announced by President Ramaphosa, who, on 23 March, declared that a national lockdown would be instituted on 27 March 2020.

The City of Cape Town like all other metros and towns was compelled to comply with all national government disaster regulations. The regulations specifically tasked municipalities with providing emergency accommodation for homeless persons. The City had to respond to this regulatory instruction in an environment of great uncertainty, when the country and rest of the world was facing an unprecedented situation. Within this context, and within severely constrained timelines, emergency procurement processes were followed.

The City had to construct a facility with running water, sewerage, hot water bathing facilities, accommodation, catering facilities, medical facilities and screening facilities under Covid conditions for an estimated 2000 people at the time, within a matter of days.

Every rand was spent on providing services for the homeless, with the following achieved:

• 1 352 homeless persons were provided with chronic and clinical treatment for conditions like TB, HIV, Diabetes, Hypertension and Epilepsy.
• 272 people tested for TB and 1 858 people screened for Covid-19
• Over 120 people re-integrated with their families
• 4 500 meals issued a day
• 2 000 mattresses and 2 000 blankets procured and distributed to every person
• Psycho-social services for substance users as part of the rehabilitation process

The City further disbursed R20 million Grant-in-Aid Funding to support homeless shelters, and a range of other NPO initiatives.

Source: City Of Cape Town