Problems continued...

Hi,

I complained about the procedures of recruitment in my earlier blogs. Moreover, finding qualified candidates is another problem. However, I faced another bigger problem than this- procurement.

Procurement of goods and services is a very complicated area. There are so many policies and procedures involved. There are so many signatures needed.

One has to announce the Request for Expression of Interest for 3 weeks. Collect the REoIs and make a shortlist. Then you have to get the No Objection Letter (NoL) from the donor for the shortlist. It is worth mentioning that the short is made by a committee which is assigned either by The Minister or Deputy Minister. Then the project has to prepare Request for Proposal (RFP) and give it to the shortlisted companies. You have to give them at least 40 days so they can prepare good proposals. Once again, a committee is assigned to select the best proposal based on technical skills and financial expenses. All this has to go for NoL again to the donor. All this process takes almost 4 months.

The dangerous part in the procurement process is corruption which I will discuss in my later blogs. However, what I want to say here is that we experience many things that we do not think about when we are studying.

Thanks,

Javid