Chief Billy Tahiru[/caption] An international procurement consultant, Chief Billy Tahiru says he will petition the office of the Special Prosecutor over the National Lottery Authority’s (NLA) award of 11 different contracts to the sister-in-law of the authority’s Chief Executive Officer. According to him, the procurement is fraught with many unprofessional conducts. Many had raised issues of conflict of interest when the media reported last week that the CEO of the NLA, Kofi Osei Ameyaw, had supervised the award of 11 contracts to his sister-in-law. Speaking on the Wednesday edition of Ghana Dadwen, an afternoon political talk show on Onua FM, in Accra, Chief Billy Tahiru remarked that the manner in which the contracts were awarded smack of corruption, hinting that he would petition the Special Prosecutor, if President Akufo-Addo fails to act on the matter. “Professionally, what you do when you want to procure some goods is that at the beginning of the year you advertise for suppliers to tender in their bids, after which you choose the lowest responsive bidder or economically advantageous bidder out of the many bids submitted, but what the CEO did was to use the shopping method. And when you critically analyse and calculate 11 contracts awarded they sum up to GHc 580,000”, he told Nana Yaw Opare, host of the Ghana Dadwen. He added that under the Procurement Law, one can only procure under three circumstances – under the Certificate of Emergence; National Security; or under Proprietary Items. He said if the NLA needed the items under emergence and all at a go, the procurement should have been done under the National Competitive Tendering Process and not through the shopping method employed by the NLA. “The CEO decided to do a shortcut of the National Competitive Tendering process by continuously dividing the GHc580,000 till he arrived at the 11 contracts he awarded to his sister-in-law, and even with that, I’m reliably informed that he only went for two invoices from two companies”, he claimed. He admonished public procurement officers to be wary of the way and manner they give approval for sole-sourcing, adding that “If you think you can misprocure [sic] anyhow, you should know that your profession has been criminalized in the sense that when you misprocure you will be prosecuted, and the penalty unit is 5years or 1000 penalty units”. By Salifu B.B. Moro/Onua 95.1FM/3News.com]]>
