'Bad mgt. practices fuelling single sourcing'

A retired captain of the Ghana Armed Forces, Budu Sam Koomson, has said the practice of single-sourcing contracts is becoming prevalent in government circles because of bad management practices.

Mr Koomson told Ekow Mensah-Shalders on Class91.3fm’s Executive Breakfast Show on Tuesday that if proper management systems were put in place to anticipate emergency needs of state institutions, there would not be the need to always give out contracts through single sourcing.

“We have a problem of bad competencies in the various procurement departments,” Mr Koomson said, adding that there must be the practice of pre-selecting and pre-qualifying certain suppliers that the government and its agencies can always fall on in times of emergencies, rather than single sourcing contracts to them in times of emergencies.

“You should be able to anticipate,” he said, and wondered why “everything in Ghana is an emergency”.

“Can’t we think? Can’t we anticipate? What is management about? What is all this, its bad management, bad capacities, bad practices, bad character, bad attitudes and that is what is getting us there, we are not being professional in this area and I don’t subscribe to it,” he added.

The Public Affairs Director of the Public Procurement Authority, Mrs Rhoda Awurabena Appiah, said on the programme that the PPA does pre-selection and pre-qualification of suppliers but not in all cases.