adminChipo Chaumba and Panashe Chikonyora
The Procurement Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (PRAZ) says it will soon introduce monitoring and evaluation regulations to enhance its supervisory role.
According to PRAZ, the move is in line with the Public Procurement and Disposal Act mandate to promote transparency in the public procurement system.
The Act stipulates that PRAZ shall “promote the training and professional development of persons engaged in public procurement so as to ensure adherence to high ethical standards”.
Over the past years the country has lost billions of dollars to corruption in procurement and there is need to strengthen the its public procurement systems through transparency, increasing competition, presenting equal opportunities and treatment, adding value for money and reducing corruption, which are the key principles for implementing procurement objectives.
Speaking to The Sunday Mail Business on behalf of the chief executive officer, PRAZ capacity building director Mr Cliff Gondo said they realised that efficiency and effectiveness are critical for the procurement system to move forward.
“To enhance our supervisory role we needed to have the capacity to monitor and supervise, so we are having monitoring and evaluation regulations,” he said.
Mr Gondo said the regulations would make sure that there was no reliance on statutory fines alone but must also include administrative offences which “allows us to penalise those who delay finishing processes that they start”.
He said PRAZ was looking at having administrative non-compliance issues also being penalised.
“So there is a raft of provisions under the monitoring and evaluation regulations, so it’s actually compliance, monitoring and evaluation regulations, because every month we ask for returns from the procuring entities; State entities, ministries and departments to tell us the procurements that they are doing, the contracts they are managing but some are not even responding to the our request for that information. There is nothing we can do to them, it’s only on the criminal offences that we can have issues with them but on the administrative side if somebody who is supposed to advertise things for let’s say five days before they start buying and they don’t do it , there is nothing we can do to them. So these regulations will help us to enforce already what is contained in the Act,” he said.
Mr Gondo said the other regulations were to do with professionalisation and licencing regulations.
“We are saying to improve the procurement processes, we must license people so they are qualified to cover for the procurement processes. We don’t want a situation whereby people do wrong things and start defending themselves saying they were never trained,” added Mr Gondo.
The regulations are aimed at specifying the power, functions and conditions of appointment and providing disciplinary procedures and general conditions that include the right to publication of membership register, offences, exemptions and recovery of costs penalties.
Online Reporter