THE chief executive officer of the Namibia Investment Promotion and Development Board (NIPDB), Nangula Uaandja, said the public outcry over the condom tender is linked to concerns about perceived or actual favouritism or corruption in the government's procurement system.
She said there are national procurement policies that are supposed to address the concerns raised about the controversial health tenders.
Uaandja wrote a post on her Facebook page over the weekend titled: 'Condoms Tender: Is the emotional reaction justifiable?', in which she explained why she believes the root problem appears to be with public officials.
From the outset, Uaandja said condoms are a necessity.
"I am sure there would be different views, but most likely there will be some level of consensus that condoms are a priority given Namibia's HIV-AIDS prevalence.
"I believe the issue is not about condoms, it is about many things which include the perceived or actual favouritism or corruption in our procurement system, the triple challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment that our people face, the perceived/actual indifferent attitude of public servants to the real issues facing our people and our failure to link our daily decisions/actions to our contributions to these problems and many more," she said.
"It is fair to conclude that public servants have a significant chance of solving Namibia's triple challenges by changing our daily actions and decisions. However, we seem to be either oblivious of this matter or we just don't care," she wrote.
The N$111 million condom tender was awarded by the Central Procurement Board of Namibia (CPBN) to a three-year-old company owned by businessman Shapwa Kanyama early last month.
Kanyama's company employs three people.
This contract is part of the N$2,8 billion batch of health tenders awarded by the CPBN. She said the government has policies to deal with the challenges faced by tenders of this nature.
"We cannot afford to ignore those policies and continue to do business as usual and expect the people to just accept it," she said.
"The next point is thus on how we could have applied government policy to solve this matter instead of giving excuses about the pricing being lower than the locally produced condoms," Uaandja said.
According to her, the Growth at Home or industrialisation policies put in place by the Ministry of Industrialisation and Trade mean nothing if public entities or the government, being the country's largest buyer, are not supportive.
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"Our NIPDB efforts to attract investments based partially on these policies will yield no results if government entities will not support the procurement of locally produced products."
She said the executive leadership under president Hage Geingob have done their part by establishing the relevant policies.
"The problem lies in the execution by the administrative leadership, which is the root cause of the problem here. The government's administrative leadership cannot continue to ignore policies aimed at empowering our people.
"Performance management in the public sector, the application of meritocracy and consequence management, is completely lacking and this cannot be allowed to continue. This lack of discipline must be stopped now by all administrative leaders of public entities."
The health ministry has been a hotbed of questionable tenders over the years, and medical store contracts could be another battleground.
