The practice of green procurement in the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality in Gauteng Province

Abstract

The persistent challenges posed by climate change require the formulation of strategies to protect natural resources at local levels of governance. Sustainable procurement has been identified as a tool to manage these challenges. The study aims to investigate the practice of green procurement at the level of metropolitan municipalities . A literature review was conducted to explore global trends and green procurement practices and aid in the development of a questionnaire for data collection. From the local context, green procurement is not a new concept. The five biggest departments in the City of Tshwane have been sampled to represent diversity in the target population.

The study employed document analysis and questionnaire to gather data. The questionnaire was web-based and distributed through an email generated from Qualtrics to participants in the City of Tshwane. The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) approach was applied to analyse data by evaluating the status of the organisation, existing resources, skills and competencies to enable the municipality to become competitive in the area of sustainable procurement. Data analysis was preceded by literature review to develop secondary data on enablers and barriers impeding the practice of green procurement. The data was grouped into enablers and barriers impending the practice of green procurement. The enablers represent strengths and opportunities while the barriers represent weaknesses and threats.

The results of the study indicate that the City of Tshwane has implemented a variety of strategies, policies, initiatives and outreach programmes to promote and improve on the practice of green procurement. The applicable legislation governing municipalities does not make it mandatory to incorporate green procurement in their Supply Chain Management (SCM) policy when procuring goods and services .The weakness of the Municipal Financial Management Act 56 of 2003 (MFMA) on green procurement has implications for the compliance of private entities providing goods and services to municipalities. In addition, elements of green procurement have been incorporated into the environmental policy and other strategies, instead of creating a standalone green procurement policy. The lack of awareness, education and training was rated top challenge that prevent municipalities from executing green procurement.

The study recommends that the national government consider amending MFMA to mandate municipalities to incorporate environmental requirements into their tender awarding criteria when procuring goods and services. The amendments should incorporate annual milestones, compliance monitoring and auditing. The study was limited to the City of Tshwane