A third contractor is paid M286,825 for paving and blinds already contracted six months earlier. The 2022 evaluation scorecards are entirely blank. No bidder names, no scores, no evaluator signature. By the time the task team visits in February 2022, cumulative expenditure has crossed M1.1 million. The building still cannot host a meeting.
This is the third and final part of a three-part investigation into maintenance expenditure at the LNDC Hlotse Residential Outestate in Leribe. Part One examined how M545,238 was paid to SPT Construction under a completion certificate while nine major items were later found undelivered. Part Two examined how LNDC paid M159,840 less than its own purchase order authorised to Clever Choice (Pty) Ltd, with no itemised explanation.
Maseru — By September 2021, the Lesotho National Development Corporation was contracting work at the Hlotse Residential Outestate for the third time in 18 months. The new contractor was T Rabotsi Construction. The purchase order, numbered 2764 and dated 13 September 2021, covered paving bricks, mountable kerbs, and window blinds. The total came to M286,825.
The Lesotho Tribune has established that this contract creates a significant overlap with work already paid for three months earlier. Under the Clever Choice contract settled in June 2021, LNDC paid for 672 square metres of paving bricks and 43 window blinds at the same property. The T Rabotsi contract, raised in September 2021, covered 800 units of paving bricks and, again, 43 window blinds at the same address. The same two categories of work, at the same property, contracted and paid for twice within a six-month window.
No explanation for this overlap appears anywhere in the documents reviewed by this newspaper. LNDC has not responded to questions about it.
“Supply and laying of paving as prescribed and fitting blinds to offices.”
General description, T Rabotsi Construction Purchase Order 2764, September 2021That is the general description on the T Rabotsi purchase order. It is also, in substance, a description of work already recorded as completed and paid for under the Clever Choice contract. The Certificate of Practical Completion for the T Rabotsi contract was signed by the maintenance clerk Ntlamelle and the contractor on 1 December 2021, with the leasing officer adding her signature on 9 December 2021. The invoice, Invoice No. 17, is also dated 1 December 2021. As was the case with the Clever Choice contract examined in Part Two, the completion certificate and the invoice carry the same date.
The payment processing approval for T Rabotsi was authorised by the PMO, PM, and GM-PDM in mid-December 2021. The amount approved, M286,825, matches the purchase order total without reduction. The audit slip records a disbursement of approximately M272,483 after withholding tax. Unlike the Clever Choice file, this payment went through without visible complication or handwritten qualification.
With the T Rabotsi payment, cumulative expenditure on the Hlotse Residential Outestate crossed M1.1 million. The property had now absorbed funds across four separate payment cycles spanning July 2020 to December 2021.
38-item renovation: paintwork, plumbing, roof, flooring, electrical, glazing, carpentry, landscaping
Roof paint — raised weeks after completion certificate signed
Paving, fencing, guardhouse, burglar-proofing, blinds — M159,840 below PO total, unexplained
Paving bricks, kerbs, blinds — overlapping with Clever Choice scope
Two months after the final payment, the February 2022 task team found the building could not host a meeting.
“The office was below standard. The team could not have a meeting in it and had to find an alternative meeting place.”
LNDC Hlotse Regional Office Site Visit Report, 7 February 2022It was against this backdrop that LNDC, in February 2022, conducted a fresh procurement exercise to identify interior designers and landscapers for yet another round of work at the property. Four interior design firms and four landscaping firms were solicited and invited to present. The Lesotho Tribune has reviewed the evaluation scorecards prepared for this exercise.
Both scorecards are blank templates. Neither contains the name of a single bidder. Neither contains a single allocated score. The evaluator field on both documents is empty.
A valid procurement evaluation requires scores recorded against specific bidders to enable a defensible recommendation. Without filled-in scorecards, there is no documentary basis for any recommendation that emerged from this process. The documents reviewed by the Tribune include no alternative scoring record, no evaluation panel minutes, and no signed recommendation memorandum.
The submission and presentation process also produced an unexplained inconsistency. All service providers were given a deadline of 18 February 2022 at 12:00 for submissions. The final Hlotse Office Readiness Report notes that Progressive Design Studio submitted its proposal at 12:30, thirty minutes after the deadline, and was permitted to present between 12:30 and 14:00 on the same day. Equinox Designs also submitted after the deadline and was excluded. The distinction between the two late submitters is not explained in the documents.
Of the four landscaping firms invited, none appeared to present. The final report records that “for landscaping services, none of the three service providers came to present their submissions or visual presentations.” The report lists three landscaping submitters rather than the four originally invited, suggesting one firm did not submit at all.
The overall picture that emerges from the three-part documentary record is of a procurement process in which the same property absorbed four rounds of expenditure totalling more than M1.1 million over 18 months, with incomplete delivery, unexplained payment reductions, overlapping scopes of work, completion certificates signed on the same day as invoices, and a 2022 evaluation exercise that produced no filled-in scorecards.
Each of the individual anomalies identified in this investigation might, in isolation, attract a procedural explanation. Taken together, across four contractors and nearly two years, they describe a pattern of expenditure at a single LNDC property that has never been publicly accounted for.
LNDC has not responded to any of the questions submitted by the Lesotho Tribune in the course of this investigation. Those questions remain open.
“`The Lesotho Tribune submitted written questions to LNDC regarding all findings reported in this three-part investigation. No response had been received at the time of publication. The Tribune will publish any response in full.
