28 Sep 2015

Minister of Finance and Development Planning, Mr Kenneth Matambo, has called upon Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Board (PPADB) staff to do their best in delivering services to clients.    

Addressing PPADB staff at a meeting that was organised to update him  about the organisation’s operations, challenges and achievements recently, Mr Matambo said the forum was part of his practice of meeting chairpersons and executives of individual parastatals under his ministry on a regular basis to be briefed and updated about their programmes. “We are created for a purpose and that purpose is to deliver service to the clients. 

And you are also delivering the service to public, contractors and so forth.  The important message here is let us do our best to deliver service to clients in as best manner as possible. Let us do our best in delivering this service.  Let us aim for excellence in delivering this service,” he said. 

“I know that sometimes when you say this to people who are supposed to deliver service they always have reasons why they are not doing the best that they could.  Some say they don’t have tools of trade, and things of that nature, and some state issues of salaries,” he added. 

Mr Matambo said PPADB, had many stakeholders to deal with and as such posed a huge challenge on PPADB executive chairperson, Ms Bridget John to deliver her organisation’s mandate. Notwithstanding such predicament, Minister Matambo advised Ms John to continuously follow the law in discharging PPADB’s mandate, as she had no other choice, but to always abide by it.  

Briefing the minister on how her organisation was performing in discharging its mandate, Ms John said her organisation was fairly young, but had a very wide mandate as it was established in 2002, following enactment of the procurement legislation in 2001.

The board, she said had been set up to adjudicate and award tenders for central government, all ministries and department. To deliver on the duty, she said they had adopted and circulated bidding packages for mandatory use by all procuring and disposing entities, adding any tender that had to go out should be cleared by PPADB through its formulated standardised bidding packages.

Her organisation, she said also had a responsibility to devolve its authority to board committees which included Ministerial and District Admin Tender Committees for speedy decision making and an obligation to monitor compliance and ensure adherence to the Act by all parties involved in public procurement and asset disposal. 

“We are implementers and we also have that oversight role. We also register and discipline contractors and no contractor is allowed to do business with government without that preliminary verification by PPADB, which we do through registration,” she added. 

Overall, she said PPADB supported procurement capacity building across ministries, tender committees and even bidding community and also advised on public procurement and asset disposal. 

Such, she added were some of the functions that had been outlined in the PPADB Act. 

Furthermore, she noted that to deliver on its very wide mandate, as a decision making body,  they had measures in place before the Board to either defer its decisions on such recommendations and call for additional information or direct whoever was placing the recommendation before the board to reconsider its recommendation. 

“We can out rightly reject that recommendation, obviously providing reasons for such rejection. 

We have that power to approve recommendations. In very rear instances we can invite an independent valuation team to evaluate bids and on its sole determination the PPAD board will make an award,” she explained. 

Further, she said there were also circumstances under which the board could tell that procuring entities had gone out of their way to set aside whatever requirements were specified in bid documents and wanted to recommend something else. 

“If we pick that we can just leave them alone and go find objective people to progress such procurement.” That, she said was intended to ensure that there was objectivity and transparency in the decision making process. Ends