WORKSHOP ON GENERIC CAPACITY BUILDING ENDS (PAGE 13, FEB 27, 2010)

A three-day workshop on generic capacity-building training on public procurement management to ensure that public funds are used judiciously has ended.
Metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives, as well as finance officers, works engineers, coordinating directors and planning officers from the various assemblies in the Western Region attended the workshop.
The 85 participants were taken through topics such as “Role of procurement and legal framework’; ‘Procurement roles, responsibilities’; ‘procurement principles and ethics’ and ‘procurement rules, methods and thresholds’.
They also went through ‘supply eligibility, qualifications and registration’, ‘introduction to the public procurement cycle’, ‘tendering process’, procurement planning’ and ‘tender evaluation procedures’ as well as ‘contract award’ and ‘introduction to contracts management’.
Speaking at the opening ceremony in Takoradi, the Head of the Local Government Service, Mr Akwasi Opong-Fosu said local government would be decoupled from the civil service when the LI 1961 was passed by Parliament.
He explained that if the Local Government District Departments Commencement Act, which was before Parliament was passed, the decentralised departments which used to be central agencies would become part of the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies.
Mr Opong-Fosu said 33,000 out of the 43,000 personnel in the civil service would be transferred to the local government.
He further explained that the civil service would focus on policy formulation while metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies would ensure the implementation of the policies.
Mr Opong-Fosu said a Functional Organisational Assessment Tool was organised to assess the organisational performance of the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies and that out of the 138 assemblies which were assessed, only 50 passed.
The Deputy Western Regional Minister, Betty Busumtwi-Sam, noted that most of the participants were conversant with the Public Procurement Law, but since the coming into force of the law, a series of workshops had been organised to refresh their memories.
She noted that the workshop would also sharpen their administrative and managerial skills, since a good procurement practice could make savings for other development activities.
The Director of Capacity Development of the Public Procurement Authority, Mr David Bennin, said his outfit had the mandate under the law to build the capacity of public officers.
He said the group undergoing the workshop was very important in the public procurement system and that they would monitor the process to ensure that the right thing was being done.
Mr Bennin said last year, circuit court judges and magistrates were trained and were now sitting on procurement cases, while 25 personnel from the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice were also trained. He added that 150 personnel from the Serious Fraud Office will also be trained.