Nghimtina proposes reform of Tender Board

MINISTER of Works and Transport Erkki Nghimtina has proposed that the Tender Board be adequately resourced and run its own affairs to reduce the potential for fraud and corruption.

He proposed that the Tender Board be transformed into an administrative institution that is independent from the direct supervision and influence of the Ministry of Finance. The current procurement system has been in place since independence, a system governed by the Tender Board which falls within the Ministry of Finance. But the Institute Public Policy Research has called on the minister to consider other submissions for the overhaul of the Tender Board.’The Tender Board’s decision-making, in our view [that of the IPPR], has to be opened up considerably by public scrutiny, as it is the spending of taxpayers’ money being decided on,’ said Frederico Links, an associate researcher at IPPR. Nghimtina said the Tender Board should be mandated to implement all the processes related to public procurement and tasked with the responsibility of responding to all the legal and administrative queries that usually emanate from dissatisfied tenderers.Links said the Tender Board under current circumstances, ‘simply does not have to explain itself to anyone’. As far as capital projects go, Nghimtina said, the Tender Board should be tasked to handle tenders from the time when tenders are submitted to the time when a tender is awarded, without the tender documents being sent back to the Ministry of Works and Transport or consultants for evaluation and discussions. Once the Tender Board is transformed into an independent entity, he said, it would be able to employ qualified professionals in different fields, including quantity surveyors and engineers, to assist in the awarding process and also slash the implementation period by at least three months. Links said Nghimtina’s proposal does not take issue with the fact that under the current situation the Tender Board effectively is a ‘club of Permanent Secretaries, most of them political appointees and all from the same political party [the ruling Swapo Party] which introduces the concern that the procurement process has become politicised’. ‘Is the minister proposing, as part of his call for greater independence for the Tender Board, that the serving PSs on the Tender Board also be done away with?’ questioned Links, adding that the IPPR proposes that the influence of the Permanent Secretaries be minimised while decision-making involves a broader constituency. At the moment, said Links, Tender Board decisions are ‘shrouded in secrecy’, saying as long as this remains the case, the public procurement system will remain under a cloud of suspicion. ‘The Neckartal Dam procurement illustrates this perfectly, as it has now become clear that factions have formed and the decision-making is influenced considerably by individual personalities who have arguably counter-productive agendas,’ charged Links. ‘This negates and subverts the weight of expert opinions and inputs and makes the entire decision-making process erratic, if not introducing the suspicion of corruption.’ Nghimtina called on Government to consider establishing a national register of contractors and other service providers that will be used for government tenders.The registration of such companies, he said, should be a nationwide exercise conducted by the Ministry of Works and Transport in participation with other stakeholders. The registration process would register, evaluate, grade and determine the classification of contractors according to their capacities. ‘The current situation where contractors are free to tender for projects of varied sizes and magnitude regardless of the contractor’s own capacity to do the work is not conducive,’ said Nghimtina. A national register, he added, would mean that the evaluation of capital project tenders per project would no longer be necessary. Addressing Parliament last week, Nghimtina said a modification of the procurement system might entail bold changes to the mandate and functions of ministries tasked with capital projects implementation including the Tender Board. The current system, he said, is ‘lengthy, complex and cumbersome’, which has enjoyed ‘minimum success’ because several procurement functions and processes are duplicated amongst several ministries that have created fiction and conflict between ministries.