Adjenim Boateng Adjei – PPA Boss
Some officials of seven state institutions found to have flouted various provisions of the Procurement Act, Act 2003 (Act 633), will soon face prosecution at the law courts.
This follows completion of investigations into how the state lost huge sums of cash through procurements made by the institutions involved.
“We are sending these reports and findings straight to EOCO for prosecution to begin,” Head of Corporate Affairs and Administration at the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) Mrs Rhoda Awurabena Appiah, disclosed on the Super Morning Show on Joy FM Wednesday.
The institutions include National Communications Authority (NCA), Bulk Oil Storage and Transport Limited (BOST), Ghana Airports Company Limited (GACL) and Ghana Water Company Limited.
The rest are National Petroleum Authority (NPA), Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) as well as Electoral Commission of Ghana.
According to Mrs Appiah, the PPA found personnel of some of the aforementioned institutions in some instances “tried to skew” contracts through various dubious means during the bidding process.
Some decide to advertise in very unpopular newspapers when the law says that it should be in two widely circulated newspapers” including advertising on “a holiday or a weekend in a corner somewhere,” she explained.
She said the PPA used to think the challenges were as a result of “institutional issues [or] capacity issues” and went ahead to commit resources to training the responsible officers without knowing they were deliberate crimes being perpetrated against the state.
Mrs. Appiah revealed that the introduction of “robust systems [including due diligence] to arrest some of these problems over the last eight months has begun yielding some juicy results including saving the nation over one hundred million cedis which otherwise would have ended up in the pockets of some unscrupulous persons.
“We have saved over 100 million Ghana cedis just within the last eight months all because we are able to see through the contracts that are brought [and] we know how padded they are.
“So contracts that would have gone for a 100 million cedis, we see that they are now going for 50million or something lesser just because some due diligence is going on now,” she told Kojo Yankson, host of the Show on the Corruption Watch psegment of the show.
The PPA official cautioned staff of public institutions who attempt to frustrate investigators from the PPA from doing their assigned duties must desist from such acts because “your mere effort to obstruct is punishable under the law.”
The “honeymooning” period she noted, is over.
–Myjoyonline