08 Mar 2020

District Administration Tender Committees (DATCs) have been reminded that they are key players in facilitating and enabling developments at district level.

Giving a keynote address at the ‘All DATC’ workshop organised by the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Board (PPADB) in Palapye recently, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration, Mr Thuso Ramodimoosi said DATCs played an important role in the development agenda of the nation with key responsibilities at local or district level.

He said DATCs’ role in district administration and facilitating  government and private sector  business partnerships could not be over emphasised as key drivers  in public procurement.

He said DATCs should uphold the values and principles of procurement, fairness, transparency, integrity and at the same time promoting quality service delivery.

Mr Ramodimoosi explained that public procurement played an important strategic role in business development, and that enterprises could grow and sustain their investment portfolios when the procurement systems provided them with opportunities to grow.

He noted that government has direct benefit due to the fact that as businesses grew, they absorbed the unemployed.

The permanent secretary noted that the ‘All DATCs’ workshop, which was held under the theme: Facilitating sustainable public procurement and asset disposal through use of Information Communication, was timely and in recognition of the important role DATCs played in promoting and supporting the government development agenda at district level.

He said it was vital that the committees looked into and aligned their mandate with the execution of government strategies.

“This forum  should not only be perceived as a capacity building undertaking, but an opportunity to introspect and see if our objectives are aligned with government agenda and where misalignments are identified, strive to align for the attainment of desired outcomes,” he said.  

For his part, the chairperson of PPADB, Mr Elijah Motshedi explained that DATCs were established as per the PPAD Act to adjudicate and award tenders on behalf of the board within a given threshold.

He added that they were also to facilitate government socio-economic objectives through effective and efficient management of public procurement systems.

He also noted that it included end-to-end management of the procurement cycle from procurement planning to assets disposal.

“In doing so, the PPADB expects that DATCs play a leading role in upholding the principles of public procurement as enshrined in the PPAD Act and regulations and always uphold and adhere to the highest level of ethical and professional standards,” he said.

He added that through capacity building workshops and other programmes, the board continued to assist DATCs and other stakeholders to improve performance.

Mr Motshedi further said the PPADB has, in recognition of the need to improve efficiency of the public procurement, leveraged on information communication technology such as the Integrated Procurement Management System (IPMS) platform.

He said the IPMS platform was available for use by all stakeholders such as contractors, procuring entities, media, the tender adjudication council and committees among others. ENDS