NATIONAL NEWS - On the stand again on Thursday at the state capture commission, former Bosasa chief operating officer Angelo Agrizzi defended the quality of his former company’s work at South African prisons, likening the service provided to Woolworths.
He was defending the fact that Bosasa’s state tenders were often very pricey, with correctional services paying the company hundreds of millions through various contracts.
The state capture commission’s evidence leader, Advocate Paul Pretorius, wanted to know if the state was getting good value for money.
“Unfortunately they were,” said Agrizzi, “but in other aspects, no. They paid a premium, but they got good quality. They paid for a Rolls-Royce and they got a Rolls-Royce [in some instances].”
In Agrizzi’s view, the service provided to the Lindela Repatriation Centre did not represent good value, but what was provided to youth centres was.
Commission chairperson Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo told Agrizzi that former MP Dennis Bloem had testified that prisoners had in fact done the cooking work for the so-called Bosasa kitchen contract in prisons.
Agrizzi concurred, adding: “I’ve got to tell you the truth here because I’m under oath. It is true. The prisoners … we used [them] to do the cooking of the food. But in that specific contract, there was training and development done, which was phenomenal.
“I could tell you that it was a rubbish contract and all that, but no. The training and development done, I think in my time, saw 60,000 offenders being trained in the food industry on nationally accredited courses.
“So that contract is a bit difficult for Mr Bloem to say they were ripped off. It’s a long debate.
“I’ll give you an example. Correctional services would fill up the courts about complaints with regards to food, with people and offenders taking the department to court all the time. Once it was done by a professional catering company [through Bosasa], we were able to reduce that down to zero. No complaints.”
He said that another thing that needed to be kept in mind was that Bosasa had exercised greater control over the storage and pricing of foodstuffs. “Sometimes corrections let it slip.”
Agrizzi added: “To say as a blanket [statement that] on that specific contract it wasn’t worthwhile … well, there was never, ever, a riot because of the quality of the food. So I can’t fault Bosasa there. I knew it, I was involved with it.
“Was it expensive? Chair, it’s expensive to shop at Woolworths. But when you eat at Woolworths, you can eat everything they provide you with. There’s no peels, no cabbages, and all the leaves and all that.
“I’m not advocating Woolworths, I’m just giving an example.”
Pretorius said, that “On that note,” he called for a short adjournment, but added they would need to look at how it would be acceptable for a company to allow for a nearly 40% profit margin on the services they were providing.
