While South Africans are faced with yet another petrol price hike at the pumps next week, the Road Accident Fund (RAF) is paying R1,666 per month, to rent a single office chair.
This is according to a report in the Sunday Times, which said that the RAF has a contract to rent 300 chairs at just under R500,000 per month for its Menlyn office.
The Sunday Times stated the RAF’s board was dissolved by Transport Minister Blade Nzimande this week, due to massive leadership failures.
The company, which is almost exclusively funded by a petrol levy, is technically insolvent with contingent liabilities of close to R190 billion.
The RAF reportedly said that renting furniture was expensive and “not the best option”, but could not settle claims immediately, and therefore chose this route.
The Sunday paper reported that a bid to push through a R60 million furniture rental contract was scrapped in March.
State entity Eskom meanwhile, was accused of a similar scandal in 2017.
Eskom called for Treasury to approve a R24 million contract to buy 9,217 office chairs.
The request for thousands of “operator and visitor chairs” came after a R72.7-million contract for office and soft chairs was signed in 2013.
Treasury was suspicious of the request and conducted inspections of Eskom’s offices in South Africa. It found that only 500 chairs were needed by Eskom – not over 9,000.
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