I am humbly reaching out to you regarding the outstanding payment from CoGTA.

CoGTA undertook to pay the CWP retention fees once the IA Annual Performance Assessment and the handover were complete. We regard it as wrong for CoGTA to hold off paying the retention fees, since Seriti Institute has met all the contractual obligations - reconciliations, handover to the existing IAs, performance assessments and closeout reports etc all of which was finalised by June 2018. The SLA between CoGTA and Seriti states that the retention fees will be released and paid as part of the final invoice at the end of each financial year. However, the retention fees for 2016/17 and 2017/18 financial years have not been paid to date.

I have repeatedly asked what is required to expedite a settlement of this matter. I have also painstakingly outlined the sequence of events, the various meetings, emails, reconciliations, handover, performance assessments and closeout reports that Seriti has engaged in with CoGTA officials. Furthermore, all of these were approved, settled and signed off by CoGTA.

It is disappointing to note that as a non-profit organization we have been liable to pay suppliers the 5% that was not recovered from CoGTA from our resources. This in itself is disappointing and irregular.

Seriti has already spent a substantial amount of its resources disputing the procedural and substantive irregularities in the CWP tender process. Judgement was awarded in Seriti’s favour. The Pretoria High Court ruled that the CWP procurement process (2018-2021) was “constitutionally invalid and unlawful”. We don’t have the resources and time to incur further legal costs for CoGTA and ourselves, we would appreciate it if this situation were remedied and we receive payment as soon as possible.

We look forward to receiving your urgent response.