{"id":347922,"date":"2017-08-25T09:15:09","date_gmt":"2017-08-25T09:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=347922"},"modified":"2017-11-10T14:48:02","modified_gmt":"2017-11-10T14:48:02","slug":"imani-recall-how-to-prevent-a-72m-state-pension-procurement-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2017\/08\/imani-recall-how-to-prevent-a-72m-state-pension-procurement-scam\/","title":{"rendered":"IMANI Recall: How to Prevent a $72m State Pension Procurement Scam [Article]"},"content":{"rendered":"
This week, two sobering news items on abuse of public funds has necessitated revisiting IMANI\u2019s solutions that went ignored.<\/p>\n
While we need to punish public officials culpable and retrieve wasted or stolen money, what worries us greatly at IMANI is the fact that these stories of brazen abuse are only heard after a political party has lost political power.\u00a0 We can only hope that our new government will prevent these from happening ever again.<\/p>\n
However, we have to urge the new government to adopt habits that can curb the anomaly. We are aware a ministry has been created to deal with public procurement. We need more than that.\u00a0 Last year, IMANI suggested that \u2018\u2019all government projects costing more than 10,000 units (with a unit equivalent to 1 GHS in 2016) will require a certificate of sound value before the award of contract.<\/p>\n
A Value for Money report must accompany the certificate of sound value and should be published on a public website. Panel hearings should be open to the public. Where the panel has no expertise in a particular project domain at hand, a call for input from external assessors should be placed on the internet and published in leading dailies. If at the end of this extended period of evaluation the expertise remains unavailable, the matter should be referred to the Auditor General for pre-project auditing.<\/p>\n
The provision of a certificate of sound value should be time-bound, perhaps 30 calendar days upon receipt of the notice of an intent to sole-source or award enter into negotiations with the winner of a public bid from the Procurement Committee of the public agency or enterprise. There should be room for extension if a referral becomes warranted as above.<\/p>\n
Ghana has to start making progress towards such levels of transparency if we are serious about protecting the public purse. Details of contracts awarded, including sub-contracts must be public knowledge. It is also important that Ghanaians are aware of persons behind companies that win such contracts.<\/p>\n
Such level of transparency allows the public to track where every cedi of public funds is going and for them to raise the necessary red flags. It goes a long way to also discourage corruption.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n