FOL: Abuses with tenders, damage to public money
Prishtina, March 22, 2012 – Movement FOL held the round table “The abuse of public authority in procurement”, discussing aspects of abuse of authority in public procurement by procurement officials, contracting authorities, economic operators and other institutions . On the panel to discuss this topic were Abdyl Limani, an expert in Public Procurement Regulatory Commission, Admir Salihu, procurement monitoring at Movement FOL, however, despite confirmation that will be participating, Arian Zeka of American Chamber representative in Kosovo was missing.
In this debate was stressed the un-coordination of the institutions to regulate various aspects of Procurement, cases where the PRB, and PPRC did not have the same opinion and procurement officials have remained confused with interpretations and penalties.
The participants also mentioned the recent changes in the Procurement Law which have not yet regulated some aspects of procurement, leaving unregulated the issue of very low prices low in tender or very high ones, as a consequence the economic operators abuse with offered prices.
Admir Salihu, monitoring officer at movement FOL said that FOL since March 2011, has monitored and supervised about 40 tenders from the tender opening procedure, examination, evaluation and comparison of tenders to the award of contract. We also have participated in more than 20 re-tenders and re-evaluations “. Movement FOL has reported about legal and administrative irregularities where sometimes there were direct influences to be revised or cancelled as a whole these irregularities. “There are 14 reports on tenders where FOL has concluded that there were serious problems, three of them have been cancelled by the Public Procurement Review Body, regarding the other three we were guaranteed from the procurement office that our suspicions are carefully examined and are avoided and two other tenders FOL has requested that the Ministry of Justice must proceed to the Prosecution for suspicion that economic operators have committed crimes, fraud, falsification of documents and legalization of the falsity. Permanent secretary the Ministry of Justice has sent the report to the State Prosecution by e-mail. “
Meanwhile, Abdyl Limani, an expert in Public Procurement Regulatory Commission (PPRC) said that PPRC within the powers we have, we offer opinions to contracting authorities and economic operators, prepare and distribute flyers for the implementation and interpretation of legal provisions. PPRC has its department of Regulations, Monitoring, IT and Training. Within the Department of Regulations has been formed the advisory or helping table in which any interested person has the address and any time one can ask for help, advice and interpretation, “said Limani. According to him, this institution every day accepts calls for help and advice. “Currently there are some cases which are being investigated and monitoring. Typical violations are wrong preparation of tender documents by procurement officials, cancelling the tenders without legal basis, specification of measurable criteria without discrimination, breach of contract and determining the criteria that favour one group of public operators and discriminate against others, declared Limani. According to him Contracting Authorities have the opportunity to leave negative references to Economic Operators who do not meet the contracts properly; this will help the other Contracting Authorities not to select those economic operators.
Bedri Bahtiri, Permanent Secretary in the MJ said that greater transparency in the procurement offices reduces the malpractices. They should also work in the education of personnel in the procurement field, giving everyone the opportunity to professionalise. Further, Mr. Bahtiri added that it is important that the Central Procurement Agency be in charge of similar procurement services of various institutions such as fuel supply and other services, which would lower the cost of expenditure of some of the institutions.