The most breached law in Ghana is the Public procurement Act,2003( Act 663) which binds every public institution in the awards of contract. The current UEW impasse is as a result of serious public procurement infractions and as an alumnus, i am the most happiest man on earth because, certain officials who are key principal spending officers of the institution have been asked by a governing council to step aside following EOCO and BNI criminal investigation in the procurement irregularities. Those officials are the embattled VC and the Finance officer respectively.
Other additional four officers who notable among them is the head of procurement at UEW have all been asked to step aside on grounds that, they as custodians of certain documents have made several conceivable attempts to obstruct the ordinary course of both BNI and EOCO investigation by means of hiding vital documents.
UEW as an institution needs a complete overhaul and the only way is to *weed* out certain personalities who have taken the institution as their *BONAFIDE*. Let it be on record that, in 2015 when EOCO descended heavily on UEW Kumasi Campus concerning a lecture theatre project, EOCO established in it preliminary findings that, the said project never went through procurement. I had the benefit of perusing the said report because i personally invoked the investigative jurisdictions of EOCO in that matter. This is enough evidence on the face of record that, when it becomes to procurement violations in the award of contracts uew has always been a champion in that regard. The consequences of breaching a procurement law are,
I. It renders the award of contract fraudulent
II. A breach of any provision of the said law also put the contract on the altar of nullity cum criminal prosecution against whoever facilitated the said breach.
The framers of the procurement law once envisaged that, a time will come the said law will suffer substantial breaches so a *criminal* sanction as a punitive measure to ensure strict compliance of the law was annexed as a provision. In the preceding paragraph i will highlight the said provision for the purpose of education.
*Offences relating to procurement*
92. (1) Any person who contravenes any provision of this Act commits an offence and
where no penalty has been provided for the offence, the person is liable on summary
conviction to a fine not exceeding 1000 penalty units or a term of imprisonment not
exceeding five years or to both.
EOCO and BNI intervention in the matter will bring sanity in operations of UEW as well as other public institutions of the state. My passionate appeal to those in charge of the criminal investigation is that, at the end of their mandate as an investigative body, who ever is found culpable on the face of claims of procurement violation should be handed over to the Attorney General for prosecution to take effect. This is the only way we can move forward as a serious country if those who disrespect are laws are punished severely. UEW has been in a total mess for far too long and the *OVERHAULING*exercise currently ongoing is in the right direction.
Source: Dawda Eric/[email protected]
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