Montana defends R80m Prasa contract
FORMER Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) chief executive Lucky Montana has vehemently defended projects and contracts undertaken during his tenure at the helm of the rail agency.
Montana, who returned to the Commission of Inquiry into state capture, was questioned about an R80 million contract that Prasa entered into with Prodigy, which was offering customer service training for young professionals.
Initially, the training was expected to cost R18m that would be claimed back from the Transport sector education and training authority, but Prodigy was paid R82m in five years.
Montana stood firm, saying that there was nothing irregular about that contract, and that Prodigy increased the number of people trained from 300 to 3 000 and "the project changed lives and gave people hope".
The commission dealt with the affidavit of former Prasa general manager for legal services Fani Dingiswayo.
In his affidavit, Dingiswayo said he refused to sign off on the contract because he found irregularities and that Prasa allegedly did not open the tender for competitive bidding. He also accused Montana of firing him because he questioned irregular contracts.
Montana told the commission that Dingiswayo was part of a group of people from Prasa who were intent on discrediting him because he had disciplined them at some point during his tenure.
"I am not in a beauty contest. I've never run a company where people liked me and, in fact, I like it like that," Montana said. He claimed that people including Dingiswayo and former head of the legal division, Martha Ngoye, were bitter and in turn sided with former Prasa board chairperson Popo Molefe when their relationship soured.
He said his detractors then tried to inappropriately link him to controversial people like the Gupta family and politically-linked Durban businessman Roy Moodley.
Moodley is accused of irregularly benefiting from multimillion-rand security contracts at Prasa from the early 1990s through his security company Royal Security. Moodley is also accused of paying former president Jacob Zuma a R1m "salary" for four months in 2009.
Montana told the commission that the Guptas and Zuma were not involved with Prasa.
"People thought at the beginning the Guptas were inside Prasa. When they realised that the Guptas were not at Prasa and involved with Zuma in the rolling stock programme, then they had to find something else.
"I have many weaknesses, but the ones that I am accused of here, are all false and part of an agenda to discredit me," Montana said.