Harare (New Ziana) -The Procurement Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (PRAZ) in partnership with the African Development Bank has engaged the media and some security establishments in the country to help fight corrupt tendencies within the government procurement system, a senior official has said.
PRAZ deputy board chairman, Cletus Nyachowe said this in an interview with New Ziana on the sidelines of the Public Procurement 3rd annual conference in the capital on Monday.
He said the media can play as a referee in highlighting positive issues taking place in the procurement space as well as those that might not be in line with the rules and regulations.
“We reached out to the media because you would find out that there are those areas where we still have some corrupt tendencies elsewhere, so we wanted media to highlight such red flags to the general citizenry at every facet and at every level,” said Nyachowe.
He said the media, because of its reach, can also play a key role in sensitising the small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) on what to do to participate in the public procurement space.
Nyachowe said of equal importance is the security sector which they have also roped in.
“Then the other key stakeholder which we are also reaching out to is the security sector because we also need to flag out those red flags in public procurement so that as they execute their duties they will be very much alive to see all the mischief which can then be found in some of these things,” he said.
He said as a regulator, they are not involved in the procurement processes, but provide technical guidance which include monitoring and evaluation.
To date, Nyachowe said they have trained journalists from the Northern Zone which includes Harare, the Mashonaland provinces and Manicaland as well as the Southern Zone which includes Bulawayo, Midlands and the Matabeleland provinces.
“We are continuously going to be conducting some of these trainings because right now when we discussed then we were still using manual procurement processes, but now that we are having electronic procurement system, we still need to reach out to our colleagues and appraise them on the latest developments in terms of what is now on board,” he said.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Monday launched the electronic Government Procurement System (eGPS) whichn will streamline state procurement processes.
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