By Isaac Zulu
The public contracts awarded to the Hichilema-linked private companies raises more questions, says Transparency International Zambia (TIZ) president Sampa Kalungu.
Speaking in an interview, Kalungu said that the UPND came into government with a call to fight corruption, and as such, the UPND administration should elevate the levels of transparency in public procurement processes.
He said it is wrong to sub contract private auditing firms that are linked to senior government officials “just because there is a legal provision that gives authority to the office of the Auditor General to do that.”
“Yes, the Auditor General can have authority to sub contract. But it is important to note that the private auditing firms that have been sub contracted are linked to the finance minister. You should also remember that the current President (Hakainde Hichilema) before becoming Head of State was a shareholder in one of those companies if not a board member. So it would have been prudent to declare interest and let other auditing firms engaged or sub contracted by the Auditor General. But proceeding the way they have proceeded raises a lot of questions,” Kalungu said. “They should not justify the sub-contracting of the private auditing firms by saying there is a provision in the law. We expect the UPND government to elevate some levels of transparency in public procurement processes.”
Kalungu said that the ideal situation would have been to subject the bidding process to an open tender “so that more companies, including Zambians can participate in the auditing of public institutions provided they meet the requirements.”
Kalungu said that by allowing foreign private auditing firms to audit public institutions also poses a security threat to the country, saying “the auditing of public institutions would include security wings.”
“Remember that the private auditing firms that are under discussion are international in nature. And therefore we don’t know what they can do with the audit report or where they will take the information that they will gather from the auditing exercise. So we need to be cautious on how we tread with this issue so that we don’t expose the country to some level of insecurity,” Kalungu said.
He also said that the UPND government’s procurement processes are now characterised with single sourcing, something he said many Zambians despised during the Patriot Front government.
“We have noticed that single sourcing has characterised the procurement processes in the UPND government. With the procurement of fertiliser they started single sourcing last year and this farming season they are single sourcing. This is what people despised during the PF government,” said Kalungu. “Is it going to be a routine? Or it is just the people that will change when there is change of government without changing the way things are done? We pray that the UPND administration will not continue on this path of abrogating procurement procedures that require transparency in the awarding of contracts.”
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