Overstrand Municipality reports that it has received several calls from service providers over the past weeks who allege that they have been contacted and requested to make payments in exchange for receiving a tender or quotation.
In light of this the municipality warns that it will never contact any service provider to solicit or request payment for any tender, formal quotations above R30 000 or quotations up to R30 000.
Overstrand Municipal Manager Dean O’Neill stated: “This is a fraudulent activity, and we therefore appeal to the public to be alert and not engage and respond to such emails as they are scams, please ignore and report them to the municipality immediately.
“Very often enterprises and innocent residents fall prey to these acts of criminals and consequently suffer major losses. We must at all times be alert and report these activities and communication to the relevant authorities as these are criminal offences.”
O’Neill added that the municipality recently discovered that there is an emerging fraudulent scam in which fraudsters use the names and email addresses of municipal officials to lobby bribes from the service providers who have submitted bids for tenders.
The municipality has already reported this to the South African Police Service.
“Criminals also call service providers pretending to be an employee of Overstrand Municipality, employed in the Supply Chain Management Unit [SCM],” said O’Neill, “in an attempt to solicit bribes and promise to influence the outcome of the award in their favour.
“Our Supply Chain Management officials are ethical and would not engage in fraudulent activities as referred to. Nevertheless, we investigated the emails and the message routing and concluded that they did not originate from any internal staff.”
To verify the authenticity of requests for goods or services, the public can contact the following officials:
Junade Aplon, the Senior Administrative Officer: SCM on 028 313 5021 028 313 8052 or e-mail: japlon@overstrand.gov.za or Nicolene Liebenberg, the Principal Clerk: Procurement on 028 313 8052 or e-mail: nliebenberg@overstrand.gov.za