Cartels in textbook tender restrategise

Fri, 28 Apr 2017 10:14:00 +0000

THE manner in which tenders have been floated and contracts awarded for the publication of school text books to publishers by the Ministry of General Education in the past few years has always raised concerns from the stakeholders and the nation at large.

The outcry from the local publishers has been that the centralised procurement system, and not the decentralised, adopted by the Ministry of General Education favours a selected few foreign publishers whose companies are registered with the Patent and Companies Agency (PACRA) at the expense of local private publishing houses.

For instance, according to the Ministry of General Education recently published notice of best evaluated bidders for the supply and delivery of textbooks for Grades 3, 7 and 12 a whooping US$ 3, 457, 000 million has been allocated to the Grey Matter Zambia, a foreign publisher representing Longhorn Publishers of Kenya while only about K2, 559, 984.37 million was awarded to Mwajionera a local company.

We note with interest that MK Publishers who supplied and delivered substandard text books which were later rejected by government schools last year has not been awarded a tender this time round. Instead, it is another foreign company that has been awarded a huge tender to supply the textbooks to the disadvantage of local publishers.

What safeguards has the Ministry of General Education put in place to avoid what happened with MK Publishers? Why should the Ministry entrust a foreign publisher to supply textbooks with the appropriate content when past record has proven otherwise?

Clearly, something must be wrong with the way these tenders are awarded to publishers. It is indisputable that a cartel has emerged in the Ministry to dubiously benefit from the tendering process.

Why should the Ministry always give huge tenders to companies that are individually owned as opposed to those with high standards in corporate governance?

It appears the only reason for such preference is to enable cartel members to find it easy for them to get kickbacks once they execute the assignment.

What is more worrisome is that though this level of corruption has exposed our Zambian schools to being used as test ground for book contents that might have been rejected by other education systems, no deliberate measures seem to have been put in place to correct this anomaly. Does the Ministry expect standards of education to improve with such compromises in the supply of textbooks?

Previously, the Ministry has severally justified their action not to award tenders to local companies citing lack of capacity to compete with other publishers to produce books but we do not think the explanation given is true.

In our view, giving preference to a foreign publisher simply because the company is registered with PACRA, Citizen Economic Empowerment Commission (CEEC) and the Book Publishers of Zambia (BPAZ) does not automatically guarantee that the services offered would meet the standard set by the Ministry.

These foreign companies could now be registered in Zambia purely for the benefit of the centralised tendering process and not that they have capacity to produce quality text books meant for use in our schools. In fact, it is a ploy aimed at disadvantaging the local publishers and writers who have been fighting the new system.

The quality of text books that ought to be distributed to our schools must be thoroughly scrutinised for compliance with appropriate content, correct translations and orthography.

Unfortunately, this has not been the case with many of the books that the Ministry has been distributing to schools since the introduction of the centralised procurement system. The flurry of compromises can only point to one thing- grand corruption.

We know that the effective process of the book publication entails the Ministry providing guidelines on book development to publishers who in turn contract authors at their own risk and expense before the book is approved by the Curriculum Development Centre (CDC).

We are particularly concerned that the Ministry of General Education has defied the recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee that suggested the Ministry to revert to the old system of purchasing books that gives room for schools to choose books for themselves and allow for all publishers to participate in the process.

We think it is critically important for the Ministry to handle the tendering process for printing of books meticulously.

There is need for seriousness considering that the books to be produced are meant for developing mental faculties of young minds, and using wrong, sub-standard information is the worst disservice to humanity.

Merely changing the foreign company to which a huge tender for the supply and delivery of text books has been awarded does not guarantee of desired results. What the cartel has done is to simply restrategise on how it should continue deriving financial benefit at the expense of raising education standards.

Time to dismantle cartels in the text book tendering process is now!