Edwin Sodi. (Mlungisi Louw/Gallo Images)
A health hazard is on the horizon in the Free State, where a R100 million water project is lying in ruins after a company linked to Edwin Sodi failed to complete the development by a March 2023 deadline.
The businessman is already implicated in the cholera outbreak in Hammanskraal, Tshwane, which had claimed 20 lives as of Thursday, according to the Gauteng health department.
Sodi is also appearing before the Bloemfontein magistrate’s court, facing more than 70 counts of fraud, corruption, money laundering and asbestos contraventions relating to a contentious R255 million Free State contract, along with suspended ANC secretary general Ace Magashule and 13 other accused.
In June 2019, the water and sanitation department began a R117 million project to try to eradicate bucket toilets and pit latrines in the Setsoto local municipality in the Free State.
G5 Group — which shares the same registration number as NJR Projects, according to a company search by the Mail & Guardian — was awarded the tender by the water and sanitation department to dispose of the antiquated toilet system.
At the time, Setsoto, which has only 115 000 residents, had 7 006 bucket toilets, the highest number in the country according to a non-financial census of municipalities released by Statistics South Africa in 2019.
Selloane Lephoi, the spokesperson of the Setsoto Service Delivery Forum (SSDF), warned that an outbreak similar to the Hammanskraal crisis was imminent in the area, because sewage was flowing into the water supply.
The SSDF is the second-largest party in the local municipality’s council, which incorporates the towns of Ficksburg, Senekal, Clocolan (Hlohlolwane) and Marquard near the Lesotho border.
“The biggest challenge is the flow of the sewage. New water treatment plants are being constructed between Senekal and Clocolan, but they won’t be connected to the new [Setsoto] townships because the eradication of the bucket toilet project is far from being completed,” Lephoi said. “There is nowhere where the sewage is treated.”
A background search showed Sodi was a G5 Group director when the firm received the bucket toilet eradication contract, before he resigned from the company in May 2020.
In the wake of the cholera outbreak in Hammanskraal this month, Sodi was implicated in an August 2021 report by the South African Human Rights Commission.
In the report, Tshwane councillor Hannes Coetzee says that a R295 million tender to upgrade the Rooiwal wastewater treatment plant, which services the Hammanskraal area, was awarded “to a joint venture involving a company allegedly owned by Edwin Sodi, but to date little work has been completed”.
Bucket list: Workers at the G5 site in Meqheleng township, Ficksburg, say Edwin Sodi visits regularly. (Oupa Nkosi)
“The commission heard that some R295 million allocated for the water project unaccountably disappeared. Furthermore, the commission heard that a tender was uneconomically, inefficiently and wastefully awarded to an amateur contractor who priced higher than the qualified and experienced contractors. This is in conflict with constitutional and statutory obligations of the [Tshwane] council,” reads the report.
In the Setsoto municipality, all there is to show for the expenditure to eradicate bucket toilets is rusting water infrastructure and equipment lying unused at the project’s campsite. Concrete and water pipes lie in the Free State sun, where they have been lying for nearly four years.
When the M&G visited Ficksburg, the main town of Setsoto, workers at the G5 campsite claimed Sodi was a regular visitor to the project, and was still involved with the company awarded the tender.
Lephoi, who regularly interacts with the project’s workers, said regular stoppages occurred on the site, because people’s salaries were allegedly cut or not paid.
The payslips, which the M&G has seen, show the wages of the project’s workers have been cut from a net income of R11 115.97 in April 2021 to R6 435 currently.
No Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) contributions or pay as you earn (PAYE) tax have been made, nor do the workers receive benefits.
This is despite the workers’ compensation, according to contracts they signed with the G5 Group, stating that the gross “remuneration with the company shall be the sum of R12 106.75 per month”.
“The employee’s salary will be paid monthly … less any statutory deductions which the employer is required to make (UIF and PAYE) and other deductions to which the employee has agreed,” read the contracts.
Asked whether Setsoto municipality could avoid becoming another Hammanskraal, Lephoi was sceptical that it could be finished this year, or any time soon.
“People do not want to work because they chopped their salaries by almost half. Even with chopped salaries, the workers still do not get paid on time, which results in a flare-up of labour protests and work stoppages,” Lephoi said.
When the M&G tried to contact Sodi for comment, it appeared his cellphone number had been disconnected. NJR Projects (or G5 Group) director Angelique Moodley did not answer any of the Sodi-related questions, save to say that the company had “completed various infrastructure projects for various clients, to the satisfaction of said clients”.
“The company prides itself in having a history of executing large scale infrastructure projects. With regards to our current project, the Bucket Eradication Project, please refer your questions on progress and performance to our client, the department of water and sanitation,” she said.
The company is not new to controversy. It received part of an irregular R300 million contract to build “transitional residential units” in East London, Eastern Cape — a project that began in 2020 as part of the government’s response to the pandemic.
Only 346 of an expected 1 800 structures were built to reduce the density levels of the overcrowded Duncan Village, with the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) saying that contracts for the tender were extended for “unjustified” reasons.
“The SIU will recommend that civil proceedings be instituted to set aside the contracts awarded, and to recover all monies charged and paid to the service providers,” it said.