Between the hammer and anvil; tough life of a procurement officer
Kenya Institute of Supplies Management chairman Chris Oanda. The institute, he says, will take stern action, including deregistration and blacklisting, against any of its members found culpable of corruption. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
That the procurement officers have often been made scapegoats in the war against corruption is not to say that they are not usually party to the corruption deals.
In fact, many of them often live a king’s life even when their jobs earns them peanuts.
A number of them have high rise buildings in prime locations in Nairobi and other towns.
For government procurement officers, their lives are always between the hammer and the anvil.
Amidst the many temptations they encounter, procurement officers who spoke to the Sunday Nation narrated how they live one day at a time not knowing what the next day holds.
“In any procurement, there are always clashing interests and the procurement officer is the one in the middle. Deciding either way could make you lose your life or your job besides being dragged to court,” a procurement officer who works at the judiciary said.
He says that whenever a tender is floated, procurement officers often get inundated with calls from their bosses and external people who all want to influence the award of the contract.
FAVOURABLE
For external people interested in the tender, cases of name dropping is very common.
“Someone will call you and say he has been sent by so and so at the Office of the President or someone very senior. The idea is to intimidate you as a procurement officer to favourably consider a company that person is fronting.”
While dealing with cases of name dropping, the officers say that their bosses who are usually the ones authorised to incur expenditure will also brazenly come with a name of a company associated to him.
“Sometimes, we feign sickness to get out of the boiler room because you can easily get burnt,” another told the Sunday Nation.
President Uhuru Kenyatta directed that heads of procurement and accounting units step down and be subjected to vetting as he sought to tame corruption in his administration. This followed the recent cases that include the Sh9 billion National Youth Service scam and similar corruption allegations at the National Cereals and Produce Board and Kenya Pipeline Company.
FORCED LEAVE
Though a court order had suspended the head of public Joseph Kinyua’s circular sending the officers on forced leave, many of them were still rushing to meet the Friday deadline when they were required to submit certain personal information.
“For a civil servant, it is safer to submit the information we have been asked than wait. The court order might not save me if I don’t comply,” a principal accountant in government told Sunday Nation.
Procurement officers also said that the reason why they have become the targets in the war against corruption is that they are required by law to append a professional opinion to an evaluation report.
“Sometimes, the opinion is not always what we personally believe in but do we have a choice when your job is on the line?” one posed.
Having appended a professional opinion the procurement officers automatically become accomplices in case a corruption allegation arises.
PRIME LOCATIONS
That the procurement officers have often been made scapegoats in the war against corruption is not to say that they are not usually party to the corruption deals.
In fact, many of them often live a king’s life even when their jobs earns them peanuts. A number of them have high rise buildings in prime locations in Nairobi and other towns.
In a recent statement, the Kenya Institute of Supplies Management (KISM) which is charged with the professional development and regulation of procurement and supply chain management practitioners in Kenya called on the government not to judge their members unheard.
KISM chairman Chris Oanda said procurement is “a multi-stakeholder process” involving different professionals and user departments, each of which contributes to the success or failure of exercise.
CULPABLE
“We affirm that KISM stands for procurement professionalism and is keen to establish, after ongoing investigations are complete, if any of its members played any role in the NYS malpractices. Until then, procurement officers should not be scapegoats for anyone,” Mr Oanda said.
The institute, he said, will take stern action including deregistration and blacklisting of any of its members found culpable and called on procurement officers to resist any intimidation or coercion to take part in any procurement malpractices and “not suffer in silence” in case they face such.
