Ordinarily, I would not make any early comments on purported corruption case until the abled research team of Crusaders Against Corruption-Ghana has done their independent findings. However, after reading the attempted and weak defense by Paul Adom Otchere, I thought it is prudent for me to post this open Letter.
I wanted to address you as my brother but on a second thought, I realized that no brother of mine would attempt not to protect the public purse. On this ground, I shall refer to you simply by your name.
Paul Adom-Otchere, your own narrative reveals several breaches of the Public Procurement Law ACT 663 as amended.
Firstly, you said you invited two vendors to submit bids.
May I refer you to Section 43, sub-section 5 of the law which says that you should compare a minimum of 3 quotations. In your case, you compared 2. This suggests a breach of the law here.
For avoidance of doubt, the law reads, “The procurement entity shall request for quotations from as many suppliers or contractors as practical, but shall compare quotations from AT LEAST 3 different sources…”
How do you explain this?
Secondly, the total value of the decorations according to you is GHS 84,000 + GH 34,000=GHS 118,000.00.
This is above the threshold for requesting for quotations from vendors.
If you do not know, Paul, let me kindly bring to your attention that according to the 5th schedule of the law, you ought to have, under this circumstance gone through the National Competitive Tendering (NCT) procedures, which includes advertising in newspapers.
Paul, if this was also not done then it is a clear breach of the law.
Thirdly, the transaction appeared to have been split in order to stay within the GHS 100,000.00 threshold for price quotation.
Referring you to Section 21 subsection 5 of the law which states, “A procurement entity shall not divide a procurement order into parts or lower the value of a procurement order to avoid the application of the procedure for public procurement in this ACT”.
Clearly, there are multiple breaches of the procurement law.
Moving away from the law are some common-sense questions and issues that needs to be raised;
Paul Adom- Otchere, kindly help us get some clarity here, please.
The 118,000.00 Ghana cedis Christmas trees and decorations, is it an outright purchase or it is a rental?
I ask because your own narration suggests that the transaction is an annual ritual (rental) with the 2021 expenditure, according to you, being the cheapest since 2016.
Paul Adom- Otchere, have you thought for a minute, the number of boreholes this amount could have built?
Do we know the number of families and communities these boreholes could have saved and served?
Why! Why!! Why are we doing this to ourselves as a nation?
Paul Adom- Otchere, do you believe in God?
I ask because even If the system is so weak that people can refuse to protect the public purse, it is expected that at least your Christian values and teachings would convince you a bit to help protect the public purse.
Let me relax a bit. I shall come back again on this matter in due course.
I still remain…
Emmanuel Wilson Jnr (EWJ)
LLB, ICSA part 2
Archived since March 2022
