Dr Kojo Asante, Director of Advocacy and Policy Engagement at the Centre for Democratic Development-Ghana (CDD-Ghana), has alluded that the over-reliance on stopping sole-sourced projects has not worked despite the creation and appointment of a procurement ministry to tackle the corruption menace.
“A lot of the alleged corruption cases witnessed under this regime have links to procurement breaches, the level of corruption alleged to have occurred during the erstwhile administration meant more needed to be done to fight the canker,” he noted.
Dr Asante asserted that the citizenry expected to see structures and systems strengthened or put in place to address the situation however, the strategies contained in the manifesto of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) based on which they campaigned and won the previous elections were brilliant but had yielded no result.
“Among the actions the NPP planned to take when elected into power included the setting up of the Office of the Special Prosecutor, the passage of the Right To Information Bill, ensure strict adherence to the Public Procurement Act and strengthen Parliament to be more effective and efficient.
“When the NPP was coming into office there was a certain state of corruption which was pervasive and was normalised, the citizenry got used to it, everyone is doing it and it is actually odd if you are not engaged in it, that was the state if you look at the Corruption Perception Index and Afrobarometer among others.
”I am sitting here, almost third year into the government, how am I supposed to measure whether or not I have moved from step one to step two, for me, my measure is how cases are dealt with, even though the government thought sole-sourcing was a challenge.
“If we are doing less sole-sourcing and doing more restricted and competitive then we will address it and get all the figures that are put out but if the restricted tendering system is being abused, the way it is abused, you haven’t solved the problem, we need to be able to get into a place where the system is tightening.
“I don’t feel it and the evidence is clear, if you look at all of the cases, is how well we are enforcing the procurement processes,” Dr Asante cautioned. -abcnewsgh.com
