Rubavu to improve tendering process

WESTERN PROVINCE RUBAVU — The newly appointed Rubavu District Acting Coordinator Martin Habimana has said that the district is doing every thing possible within its means to improve the tendering process to ensure bids are transparently awarded to competent people and firms that will help the district achieve its 2009 development goals. He was addressing participants at Gisenyi cultural center recently while on a one day training that brought together Rubavu district advisory committee members and members of the district tender board. The meeting discussed how they could contribute to the district’s economic development programs through award of various tenders to capable and competent people rather than awarding them to incompetent persons based on irrelevant considerations and other personal interests. ‘There has been in the past lack of transparency in the awarding of tenders not only in Rubavu but also in our neighboring district. You know the recent Irish potatoes tender scandals in Nyabihu that resulted into the sacking of some of the top district officials. We should award tenders to people who will contribute to the development of our district’, Habimana told participants. Habimana said that Rubavu district had tenders that needed very competent people to handle. ‘We need to keep our town clean. Our farmers need competent people to buy and sell their products such as Irish potatoes to other towns’, he said. He urged the District Advisory Committee to always supervise the District Tender Board to ensure its competitiveness. He pointed out that the Tender Board needed to uphold prudent regulations that governed the tendering process in the district with a intent of ensuring that the district authorities got value for money out of the contracts it issued to various firms. According to Zechariah Nsengiyunva, one of the participants and a member of the Economic Development Committee of the Rubavu District Advisory Committee, the training was vital as it was bound help them improve their oversight services. ‘We have acquired knowledge on how to control and help regulate the activities of the district’s tendering processes. We shall thus follow up on how tenders are awarded with a sole intent of ensuring that only competent individuals and firms are given contracts’, said Nsengiyunva. This he pointed was one sure way of curbing corruption and other forms of malpractises and vices which had a potential of threatening the credibility of the district Tender Board. Ends