​The Gauteng Department of Social Development has embarked on a drive to capacitate cooperatives to tender for school manufacturing directly with the department.
This was revealed on Wednesday during the Provincial Training and Capacity Building for Cooperatives in School Uniform Tender held at the JC Kotze Hall in Sedibeng.

Over the past years all cooperatives have been working under one Non-Profit Organisation (NPO) appointed by the department, as sub-contractors to manufacture school uniform.

Efforts are being made to capacitate and prepare cooperatives for them to participate in the bidding process to become main contractors one day.

According to the Supply Chain Deputy Director, Ntombi Mekgoe, the aim was to empower especially the black owned cooperatives so that they can stand on their own and grow.

Mekgoe added that the MEC’s approach was to open for everybody to participate in the process. She said MEC pushed so hard to ensure that instead of having one services provider who sub-contracting everyone, we should instead consider having a specification that will allow panels for cooperatives who are able to come on board and participate in the process of becoming a main contractor.

“This session is aimed at capacitating you as members of various cooperatives with information so that you can reach a level of understanding all the regulations and processes of application for procurement tendering process. We want all the cooperatives to have more and relevant information upfront than any other service providers”, she said.