The Gauteng Health Department paid R4.1 million for this hospital entranceway built little more than a year ago - and already it is badly damaged.
The entrance to the Sizwe TB Hospital in Sandringham, northern Joburg, has a brick entrance arching over boom gates at the entrance and exit, with a small guardhouse in the middle.
It has been described as the most expensive gate in the country.
But, the costly structure is already literally falling to pieces. Ceiling boards in the rooftop over the gateway are broken and falling down. When The Star inspected the gateway earlier this week, bits of board hung from the ceiling and wiring dangled loose.
The hospital itself has been in operation for more than 100 years, treating patients with illnesses such as the plague, smallpox and TB. Their most famous patient was Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who was admitted for recovery from TB in 1947.
The expensive gate caught the attention of Jack Bloom of the Democratic Alliance, who posed questions about the costly venture to the Gauteng provincial legislature.
According to the written reply he received, dated August 17 last year, the exact cost of the gate was R4 118 181.03. The company that won the tender for the project was Siyahlobisa Projects and it won because it was deemed to have come up with the lowest quotation. The two competing companies - Beyond Build Construction cc and Luvuno Projects - quoted R5 669 510.37 and R5 521 603.68 respectively for the |same job.
However, Beyond Build cc is not registered with the Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office (Cipro). It does not have a website and it is not listed in the phone directory.
Luvuno Projects does not have a website, but is listed online in a contractors' directory and in the phone book.
Last year, The Star's sister publication, the Saturday Star, contacted two established Joburg construction companies and showed them pictures of the new Sizwe hospital's entrance. They asked for quotations for the job and found that Express Construction would charge under R150 000, while Altermar Construction quoted R850 000.
Properties listed for under R4.1m last weekend include a three-bedroom home with a cottage in Parktown North, a four-bedroom cluster home with top quality finishes in Rivonia, a large family home with six bedrooms, two studies, four bathrooms, garden, pool, jacuzzi, staff accommodation and three garages in Fourways Gardens.
Bloom said he intended referring the matter to the Auditor-General for investigation.
"This is the problem with corruption. You grossly overpay on fishy tenders and end up with a botched job," Bloom said.
"This whole thing stinks. It's crass, we see it all the time and nothing is ever done about it."
But Siyahlobisa Projects CEO Vusi Mgquba said the project had been a bigger job than "it appears to the eye".
He said civil work on the area, that had to be done before building could even start, amounted to more than R2m.
"We had to do quite a lot of digging and back-fill the area with rock, before we could start compacting and build the structure," Mgquba said.
Mgquba said the health department had not contacted him with regard to the damage to the structure because none of this was due to latent defects in the building.
