By Ehichioya Steve Odion
Edo State Public Public Procurement Agency is a regulatory agency whose role in governance is to promote transparency, accountability with a view of enhancing value for money for the state.
This disclosure was made by the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the agency, Mr. Henry Idogun in an interview with the Groovewatch Magazine in Benin City.
He further said that the law establishing the agency came on board in 2012, adding that due to some legal lapses it was repealed and re-enacted in 2020 as laws in order to accommodate those things that were missing in the law.
Continuing, Idogun said the agency does not have the responsibility of construction of roads or building of infrastructure, but has added a lot of values to the process of governance. " Due to the reform we have carried out in the process of our work, the state government have been able to discover some development partners which essence is to bring more development to the state."
He said the era is gone when people collect money for a job not done and assured the public that no contractor can collect any money without executing the job since the agency have all the data of every contractors in the state.
The Chief Executive Officer also praised the Edo State Government for being the first state to be publishing contracts award in their website since 2016 for transparency purpose.
He said even though the agency has no intention of indicting any one, that before now the registration of contractors which was done by one ministry was unsatisfactory He said they have brought sanity into the registration process as the agency now have every information about all the contractors in the state. "We also know who and who is in the site. Before we came in abandonment of contracts was the order of the day. If there is any contractor that defaulted we have a way of making sure that such contractor is barred from getting any such job in the future.
Idogun also disclosed that the agency have been able to trained Procurement Officers which were posted to all the local governments in the state as Procurement officers, adding that they also have satisfied Procurement professionals whose training were sponsored by the World Bank which Edo State can now boast of.
He said the agency has also been empowered to carry out auditing of other government MDAs and Agencies through their audit unit. He said this has helped in sanitizing government agencies.
He further said that the agency was migrating to E Procurement, a complete transformation from analog to digital system which will enable government contractors to access any contract publications in their phones and other eletronics garget while in their homes.
He also talked about Edo State Project Monitoring System which he described as a wonderful application that will enable the agency to know at a glance the contract sum, amount paid as first installment and the balance to be paid.
Idogun concluded by assuring Edo people that with the system put in place by the agency that all on going projects across the state will be completed as specified in the contract agreement without any abandonment.
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