Government has disclosed that over ninety percent of road projects awarded by the Mahama administration went through the process of restricted tendering.
The Deputy Minister for Roads and Chairman of a committee set up to rationalize the number of roads under construction, Kwabena Owusu Aduomi made the revelation on Tuesday when he presented his report to the Minister.
He said over 540 road projects were opened to just a selected number of contractors for bidding.
[contextly_sidebar id=”cOTeRpXCwG9jyD85xfGhyVineBi6cp91″]“What we realized was that more than 90% of road projects were restricted tendering. Restricted tendering is more of sole sourcing or few contractors being selected to bid for a project,” he said in a Citi News interview.
Mr. Aduomi said his committee in the report recommended that going forward; the ministry must open up the tendering process to cover all eligible contractors in the country and not just a privileged few.
“Our recommendation is that so far as we have a number of contractors who are eligible to execute such projects should be allowed to bid and the ministry should do open tendering so that all those eligible contractors who by our classification should be able to do such a project should be allowed to bid.”
He said this should be done by advertising the project in the newspapers so as to make the process transparent while “the lowest evaluated bidder” is selected.
“…The lowest evaluated bidder is not the one with the lowest amount, the lowest evaluated bidder is the one whose cost or the sum he or she wants to charge is acceptable to the employee and also has the necessary resources both human and logistics and the experience to do that work,” he added.
The governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) had always accused the Mahama government of having voracious appetites for sole sourcing of contracts which they claimed were inflated at times.
The NPP argued that, sole sourcing allowed corruption, and benefited a privileged few in the Mahama government adding that an Akufo-Addo government will eschew such practice.
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By: Philip Nii Lartey/citifmonline.com/Ghana