Adwoa Safo calls for more power for procurement authority

The Deputy Majority Leader of Parliament, Adwoa Safo, is pushing for the amendment of the public procurement act to give the Procurement Authority, the powers to conduct value for money auditing on sole-sourced projects. She described as sad, revelations by the Auditor General’s annual reports that 80 percent of the procurement malpractices are centered on ...

The Deputy Majority Leader of Parliament, Adwoa Safo, is pushing for the amendment of the public procurement act to give the Procurement Authority, the powers to conduct value for money auditing on sole-sourced projects.

She described as sad, revelations by the Auditor General’s annual reports that 80 percent of the procurement malpractices are centered on sole sourcing.

Addressing the press on Friday, Adwoa Safo, who is also the Member of Parliament for the Dome Kwabenya constituency said the Akufo-Addo administration will rely on open competitive tendering to correct what she described as anomaly in the procurement act.

 

“From 2012 to 2014 when I was on the public accounts committee, about 80% of their recommendations to parliament are procurement malpractices… So I think that if the law is there, you need also a policy direction. And I think that, that is the first step that the president has given us in his state of the nation address.”

“His [President Akufo-Addo] policy direction is that this government is going to adopt open competitive tendering, so that there is openness, transparency, accountability, value for money and competition is opened to everybody including Ghanaians,” she noted.

The New Patriotic Party administration accused the Mahama administration of having a voracious appetite for sole sourcing of contracts which were inflated at times.

The NPP argued that, sole sourcing allowed corruption, and benefited a privileged few in the NDC government.

Adwoa Safo is a professional lawyer with specialization in Procurement Law.

She once worked as the first legal officer of the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) for two (2) years, and was very instrumental in the formulation of the proposals that formed the basis for the creation of the Appeals and Complaint Panel of PPA, and the change of the name Public Procurement Board to Public Procurement Authority.

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By: Godwin A. Allotey & Sixtus Don Ullo/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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