Citizens' engagement in public procurement stressed in Ctg

Speakers at a workshop yesterday opined that citizens' engagement in public procurement would improve the quality of the works and ensure social accountability to help best use of public money.

They, however, emphasised on designing constructive mechanism in engaging citizens so that powerful persons cannot influence the procurement.

They said these at a Chittagong divisional workshop on "How to Engage Citizens and Ensure Social Accountability in Public Procurement", participated by government officials, teachers, contractors, journalists, social workers, and others.

Brac Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), Brac University and Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU), IME Division of Planning Ministry jointly organised the workshop at a city hotel with Additional Deputy Commissioner Md Doulatuzzaman Khan in the chair.

Farid Uddin Ahmad Chowdhury, secretary of implementation, monitoring and evaluation division of the planning ministry, said citizens should be engaged in the purchase activities and project implementation.

Informing that 20 percent of the public purchases are currently done through online, Chowdhury said the government has plans to bring the total public procurement through electronic government procurement by this year.

CPTU Director Md Aziz Taher Khan said the government is trying to build a Third Party Monitoring (TPM) system with the help of BIGD with assistance from World Bank.

BIGD lead researcher M Mirza Hassan said currently the TPM systems are being developed at four upazilas in Sirajganja and Rangpur as pilot projects.

Prof Sikander Khan, vice-chancellor of East Delta University, Shocheton Nagorik Committee Convener Delwar Mazumder, and Dr Jafrul Islam, lead procurement specialist of World Bank, Dhaka spoke, among others.