Kerewan Area Council labeled ‘Non-Compliant’ by GPPA
Phoday Jaiteh, The Director General of Gambia Public Procurement Authority (GPPA) along with Ebrima Sanyang,the Director of Procurement Policy and Operations from GPPA has labelled Kerewan Area Council as “non-compliant”.
Phoday and Ebrima mentioned this during their joint appearance before the Local Government Commission of Inquiry on the 25th July 2023.
Currently, the Local Government Commission of Inquiry is conducting a full and impartial investigation into the local government councils to promote transparency and accountability through holistic and fair review of the financial and administrative operations of councils.
According to the review team of GPPA that conducted the review of the transactions of the Kerewan Area Council, they revealed that they have made chilling observations of violations of procurement rules.
The review team found that The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Kerewan Area Council did not monitor the entire procurement process as required by law. The CEO also failed to formalize the Contracts Committee. Another violation they discovered was the procurement unit of the Kerewan Area Council was under the supervision of the Director of Finance instead of CEO. The procurement unit did ensure the filing of all documentations for procurement transactions.
The witnesses further said that the Kerewan Area Council failed to adhere to the rule required by law that procurement transactions should have specifications to ensure that award decisions are based on merit and that It is a requirement of the law that suppliers must register with the GPPA as a condition for eligibility for receiving contracts from area councils but Kerewan Area Council violated the law by awarding contracts to suppliers that did not register with the GPPA.
The review team from GPPA reviewed documents such as the Procurement plans, Purchase requisitions, Request for quotations, Evaluation reports, Contract agreements and Mandatory reports to the Authority from the Kerewan Area Council.
