Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah has said that the strengthening of Sindh Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (SPPRA) is necessary for good governance and transparency, but SPPRA must simplify its system and conduct trainings for officers of all the departments.”
He said this while presiding over a meeting of the SPPRA at the CM’s House on Monday. The meeting was attended by CM’s Special Assistant Dr Qayoom Soomro, Principal Secretary to CM Alamuddin Bullo, Secretary Finance Sohail Rajpput and SPPRA Managing Director Abdul Rahim Soomro.
During the meeting, Abdul Rahim Soomro said that the SPPRA was established under the SPP act, adding that procurement is the act of acquiring or buying goods, services or work from external sources.
He said that SPPRA rules apply when procurements of over Rs1 million are made but most of the departments do not follow the SPPRA procedure.
Upon this, the chief minister replied that he had reports that the SPPRA procedure takes a lot of time. “This is not in the interests of the government if the work envisaged and approved in public interest is delayed in red-tapism,” he added.
SPPRA MD Rahim Soomro clarified that the reason of delay in approval wasn’t on part of SPPRA officers but the departments usually send incomplete files. At this, the chief minister directed the SPPRA to start training programmes for officers of all the provincial departments involved in procurement assignments.
Soomro confirmed that he had started training programmes all over Sindh. In more than 15 districts, two-day training programmes of the officers concerned have been completed and the training workshops in the remaining districts were in the pipeline.
Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah said that he had reports that the NAB was intervening in the matters of SPPRA. The SPPRA MD replied in affirmative, and said that the NAB thought there was corruption in all procurements. “Now, after training of NAB officers, they are not intervening in our work and understand the nature of our job,” he said.
The CM also urged the SPPRA to send proposal for establishing SPPRA regional offices: one in Hyderabad and another in Sukkur. “This would reduce work load on the head office and the complaints of the delay in disposal of files would also subside automatically,” he said.
The CM urged the SPPRA to dispose of approval of the procurement files/requests of the departments within 15 days.
