Ngurare calls for the removal of ‘middlemen’ from procurement process

Prime minister Elijah Ngurare has called for the removal of all middlemen in the procurement process to avoid delays in the government’s service delivery.

He has expressed concern about “bottleneck procurement” and middlemen “delaying crucial resources by six to seven months”.

This is despite the financial year beginning in April and ending in March for offices, ministries and agencies (OMAs), regional councils, local authorities, and state-owned enterprises (SOEs), Ngurare says.

“Most importantly, we should remove procurement bottlenecks . . . to accelerate service delivery,” he said during the official opening of a Cabinet retreat in Windhoek yesterday.

The two-day retreat aims to improve policy coordination between government entities to improve service delivery.

Ngurare said procurement has become a cancerous disease that affects every government department.

“Mr Procurement hangs over every service delivery door like the proverbial sword of Damocles. Our financial year starts in April and ends in March every year.

But if it takes six or even seven months to procure the resources we need to implement development projects, then obviously we expect monumental failure,” he said.

Ngurare, who has been in office for the last 10 months, said the public servant landscape has been marred by those who are in office for self-enrichment, using the government as a side hustle.

He said public servants should not expect to be enriched by their civil duties, but are expected to have a passion for improving people’s lives.

The prime minister called on all public servants and ministerial departments to scrutinise the need for procurement during the Cabinet retreat and to coordinate their work as the political heads of the ministries they lead.

“Mr Procurement must come under our magnifying glasses at this retreat. Let’s be frank and remove all bottlenecks that stand in our way,” he said.

The Cabinet retreat is expected to end today.

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