Simple HND procurement made complex......

It is rather ethically unprofessional for the fear of judgement debt to spearhead the compensation of the principles of Procurement such as probity accountability and value for money as we made to believe by SSNIT.

Obviously the impunity and malfeasance going on in our state institutions is just 'insulting' to the suspecting taxpayer.

The social security and national insurance trust (SSNIT) has over the years won my admiration in terms of the credible nature of management and administration but as its stands now the confidence has eroded and not cutting the coat according to its size is the reason. Why must a single state institution spend amount that could equally have served the purposes of ten institutions? 66 milion dollars on a software that cannot even guarantee SSNIT efficiency and absolute insulation from the perpetual malfeasance going on there? , what at all is this?

Over the weeks i had the privilege of observing proceedings at the public accounts committee sitting from the public standard could not help my tear glands drop tears.I could only console my self with the phrase that, 'our state institutions are simply crumbling with half baked human resource', there is so much impunity and managerial pretense. Procurement practices are either not understood or ignored with pride.

Indeed the values of our state institutions no longer resonate patriotism and hard work but laziness. It amazed me when i perused a document containing a brief of the whole SSNIT software brouhaha, it all boiled down to the incompetence of SSNIT as an institution to have properly scoped a contract document they signed with and later revoked such after blowing 34 million dollars away.

In fact this contractual blasphemy could have ended there but SSNIT by the staff of SSNIT, motivated by impudence, followed through to rectify what they deemed an oversight and eventually costing the state some whooping 72 million dollars. My simply question to the procurement officials at SSNIT is that why did they not resort to the company called PERSOL after they were found to have bided with 17.4 million cedis?..The exception of signature to cover state Attorney as was their deficiency, would have been dealt with later.

By and large it is obvious that the procurement unit of SSNIT got every step wrong either deliberately or ignorantly. The procurement unit at SSNIT certainly has an Entity Tender Committee(ETC) and the head of this very unit should have known way better the disparities that arose in the contract document before taking the next step.

The consultative processes that went into the procurement was obviously flawed and shallow.I am tempted in to believing that SSNIT engaged the services of consultants who never had background record and technical competence for such project. Best practice required that a team of consultants with vested knowledge in IT, procurement and finance were used . SSNIT danced to mantra of 'Jack of all trades'and now hunted.

There are public indications that the Economic, Organised Crime Office (EOCO) has subpoenaed a good number of the staff of SSNIT over the matter and i would entreat EOCO to take a second look at the whole procurement plan and the estimated cost of the contract in contention and call for a review if the need be.

Its important again for EOCO to check the technical background of those constituting the SSNIT's procurement evaluation board and then the validity of the whole contract.

Whoever granted the approval for those changed request Conditions in the contract document with the Perfect Business Systems & Silver-lake Consortium must be investigated.

72million dollar contract by a single state institution like SSNIT is ridiculous and too big a coat for SSNIT to wear and i say this with every resentment!!