Bole: Blame not on commission

THE National Procurement Commission (NPC) cannot be blamed for the deferral of the Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the controversial K3 billion Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) loan, acting chief executive officer Simon Bole says.
Bole said this in response to the statement by COI Chairman Sir Salamo Injia last Thursday when deferring the first hearing of the COI to Monday Nov 4 as the tender process for external lawyers from Australia was not being expedited.
Bole told The National over the weekend that the COI did not meet Section 49 of the NPC Act by submitting all the relevant documents that were required before a tender could proceed.
“Under the NPC Act, there are severe penalties for non-compliance which include a K2 million fine and 15 years imprisonment,” Bole said.
“One of the requirements is for the responsible state agency to submit all the relevant documents.
“The COI has not submitted some of these documents which includes the terms of reference and the APC (Authority to Pre-Commit Expenditure) which will have to be issued by the Finance Department and that will tell us whether there is money available for this particular tender or not.
“That has not been provided to the NPC so how can we (NPC) expedite the appointment of these Australian lawyers when all the relevant documents including funding is not provided and made known to us,” Bole said.
He said all the relevant agencies responsible such as Finance, Treasury, Planning, who were members of the APC committee and the COI team, needed to work together to submit all the relevant documents to NPC before it could be tendered.
“We have done our part in advising them on what needs to be provided and that was being sorted out since last Friday.
“We are putting out the tender on credit because the COI will have to pay for it like all other tenders and not NPC.
“We don’t have the money, we are not required under the law to pay for tender advertisements. It’s the agencies themselves, so let me place on record and make it very clear that NPC will always comply and abide by the NPC Act.”
Bole also made it clear that tender process could not be fast tracked as it was against the Act.