Mr Speaker, Deputy President, the reported overwhelming evidence of corruption in the processing and awarding of state tenders - this whole tendering process - demands closer scrutiny and transparency. To make this tendering process foolproof, as the Deputy President has suggested, the ACDP believes it should be depoliticised in order to benefit all our people and not just a few privileged and well-connected members of the ruling party.
We want to know why millions of rands are being paid to companies that won state tenders without any checking of the quality of their work. Does this mean that those people who award tenders are inefficient themselves, or are they just doing their comrades a favour by paying for shoddy work?
We believe all tender applications should be closely scrutinised by an independent, apolitical and objective panel of experts, one that does not just comprise members of the ruling party. Politicians and civil servants or their relatives should not be on the panel that processes the applications. This, we believe, will restore the credibility of the tendering process. If the Deputy President agrees with what I've just suggested, when is the earliest that we can expect a response from him? Thank you.