Treasury - back to square one

FIRST came the introduction of
a non-commissionable, nooverride
remuneration model
on government business. Now,
National Treasury has cancelled the
tender it published on July 5 and
has abdicated any responsibility to
select TMCs to service government
accounts. Additionally, Treasury
has also repealed its latest travel
policy, replacing it with new costcontainment
measures, effective
November 1.
Industry insiders told TNW that the
tender, which consisted of over 100
questions, would now be handed over
to all government departments with
the instruction that the document
be used as a template for tenders
departments would have to publish
individually. Effectively, all the work
agents put into the tender published
in July will have to be redone. An
instruction, dated September 20, on
Treasury’s website states: “New bid
processes must be initiated so that
the new contracts are implemented
by latest April 1, 2017.”
More corruption?
TMCs – most of whom supported
the transparency that Treasury
had hoped to introduce with the
measures advocated by both its
tender and travel policies – fear
that placing Treasury’s tender in the
government departments’ hands will
ultimately invite more corruption into
the tender process. An agent, who
preferred to remain anonymous, said:
“There are questions in Treasury’s
document that are outside the travel
expertise of the various departments.
They might look at the tender and
not understand what Treasury
was asking. How can they then
accurately score us when we submit
a proposal?”
In a separate instruction
with the same date, Treasury
repeals its National Travel Policy
Framework, implemented on July
1, and stipulates that government
departments that have or haven’t
implemented the policy must
continue to use their “adapted/
current institutional Travel Policy
until such time that a new National
Treasury Instruction is issued”.
The cost-containment measures
dated September 30 maintain that
all rates for Government domestic
air and land arrangements remain
nett and non-commissionable. Also,
TMCs would still not be allowed to
receive any rebates, overrides and
any volume-driven target incentives.
By December, Treasury is expected to
release a new travel policy to adopt
by March 31, 2017. There is no
mention of management or service
fees for TMCs in the instruction.
Meanwhile, travel agents are still
owed money by their government
clients. On April 22, National Treasury
made a commitment to ensure all
outstanding monies would be paid to
TMCs by May 31. Yet, some agents
still have accounts that haven’t been
paid in over a year