15 Sep 2016

Since the beginning of 2016/17 financial year, the Ministerial Tender Committee (MTC) for the justice ministry has considered 408 requests and 329 of them were approved, says Minister of Defence, Justice and Security Mr Shaw Kgathi.

Speaking at the MTC Capacity Building Workshop, Mr Kgathi said this is within the 70 per cent compliance standard set by Public Procurement and Assets Disposal Board (PPADB).

He said a total of 63 requests were deferred due to lack of proper evaluation by procuring entities and the remaining 16 requests rejected due to requests to use noncompetitive bidding methods without valid reasons.

“These anomalies point to the inadequacies on monitoring and quality control on the part of leadership,” adding that procurement was about budgeting execution noting that budget was an enabler and its execution was a leadership function.
Mr Kgathi said it was imperative for  those charged with the function of procurement to appreciate and understand the important task placed on them by the system.
The most unfortunate act, he said, was when individuals in these roles began to posture themselves as if they were being called upon to do a favour citing that government was concerned by a perception widely held that some aspects of public procurement were capable of being compromised by corruption.
He said government was seriously concerned by the implementation capacity of the public service budget monitoring adding that the development budget expenditure was generally low indicating a low project execution.
“What this means is that money that should be circulating and benefiting the nation remains locked in government coffers,” adding this was never the intention of the government hence appealing to all concerned to improve in this regard.
Welcoming the workshop participants, the ministry permanent secretary Ms Segakweng Tsiane said there was a lot that needed to be done hence the objective of the workshop; ‘to create synergy and alignment among our procurement entities.’
Ms Tsiane said the workshop aimed to achieve customer satisfaction.
She assured the minister that she was aware of his concern regarding slow response to complaints from bidders and a general poor performance on submission of end of activity reports which were all out to be corrected. ENDS