It may have been expected that the implementation of black economic empowerment (BEE), or its variant broad based economic empowerment (BBBEE), was not always going to be perfect; some teething flaws were to be tolerated. But this was not to the scale of the disguised form of corruption, where a person with a connection in a high office of a public institution would be given a tender for a multimillion rand project without following due procedure. The worst part is that the person (contractor), in most cases, where there is corruption has been reported, lacks neither the resources nor the necessary skills to execute the project to the expected standards, consequently there are four challenges that often surface. Hopefully, the new revised BEE codes will redress this.
- Poor service delivery
When incompetent contractors work on a project to construct a facility meant to serve people of a community, very often they do not deliver a project on time, let alone the quality is mediocre. The consequence is that people are deprived a service which could contribute to improving their standard of living. This could be infrastructure for a hospital, a school or a road.
- Cost overruns at tax payers’ expense
The cost of redressing a project which has been done shoddily is colossal always. In most cases, a new contractor has to be engaged, which results in the government spending at times thrice the funds that were initially allocated for the project. Funds are diverted from other matters of national import.
- Loss of confidence in a public institution
When a facility or service has not been delivered, because of one rotten apple (an unethical public servant), unfairly, the public tends to paint the whole institution with one brush.
- Dearth of innovation
Corruption removes the incentive of innovation amongst entrepreneurs as they focus on securing government tenders and miss out on opportunities which lie unexplored in the private sector.
