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BPP boss charges engineers on procurement matters
Newsdiaryonline Thur July 7,2011
Engineers
have been urged to become more involved in procurement matters
given the prominent role the profession plays in the procurement
cycle.
Director-General of the Bureau of Public
Procurement (BPP), Engr. Emeka Ezeh who said this yesterday
while receiving members of the International Federation of
Consulting Engineers added that procurement is part and parcel
of the daily activities of an Engineer.
According to him, engineers should not just
be concerned about technical matters like design and
construction but should also bother about “policy matters, which
have been left for other professionals. Engineers should be more
conversant with matters about provision of works and services
that constitute about 90% of government budget”.
He
reiterated that what the Bureau is trying to do is
to build a system where everybody will be a check for the other
and where all the contractors know the rules, like playing
football.
“If you play football, the spectators, the referee, the players,
everybody knows the rule and so when a foul is committed and
when the referee makes a mistake either for or against a
particular team, everybody knows and the crowd will boo that
this man is wrong. That is exactly what we are trying to do, to
let Nigerian public, the stakeholders, the civil society,
professional associations know, so that the contractors and
everybody knows the rule”.
He noted that when you are in public office trying to implement
procurement Nigerians should know that you are not there to
exercise discretion, as the idea behind the rules is to remove
discretion and then be guided by the rules as they are written
out in black and white.
He recalled that “It has
been tough job getting it through because part of the obstacles
to any reform globally is that many a times the people who are
beneficiaries of the old system that you are trying to reform
are in one way or the other involved in driving the reform.
“I mean to say that when you are trying to do a reform in the
public service and you ask the public servant to Chair
committees of the reform, may end up in circular motion. So,
part of the challenges we do have is that we have some
institutions that do not want the reform to take hold and some
of them are placed in a position where they participate in the
reform process and what happened is that you will have endless
motions and meetings and you don’t have any real result”.
President of the International Federation of
Consulting Engineers, Mr. Greg Thomopulos also decried the
situation where Engineering jobs and profession are purchased at
the cheapest price. Rather it should strive for the best quality
Engineering service. He called for a change in the interest of
standardizing the practice of the profession.
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