$28m BOOKS CONTRACT NULLIFIED

By William Yaw Owusu

Thursday, 19 October 2006
A HIGH Court in Accra has declared null and void, the 28 million dollar contract given by the Education Ministry to MacMillan Education Limited for the supply of school textbooks.

This implies that the ministry will have to restart the procurement process.

The Fast Track High Court in its ruling yesterday on the suit filed in June by the Ghana Book Publishers Association ( GBPA), said that the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports (MOEs) failed to follow laid down procedures in the award of the contract.

The court, presided over by Mr Justice E.K. Ayebi, also ruled that the Public Procurement Board (PPB) erred in law when it granted approval to the MOEs to proceed with a single-sourcing procurement to purchase the supplementary school text books.

The Ghana Book Publishers Association filed the suit against the Ministry, the Procurement Board and the GetFund Board, seeking an injunction to stop them from going ahead to give MacMillan Education, the sole right to supply books to schools throughtout the country because it violated the provision of the Public Procurement Act 2003.

The court awarded ¢5 million cost against each of the three defendants but withdrew it later following a submission by the GBPA explaining that it wanted to waive it due to public interest.

"The manner in which the MOEs went about the single sourcing procurement has not been transparent," the court said.

It noted that the then minister, Yaw Osafo-Maafo, having decided to go for single-sourcing procurement, should have given a public notice to allow public comment on the issue before asking the PPB to approve the procurement in favour of MacMillan.

The court said the Public Procurement Act 663 allows single sourcing procurement but the explanation given by the MOEs fell short of what was needed to effectively apply the process.

The court said the GBPA did not complain of the urgency that the MOEs cited as its reason to single source the textbooks for the 2005/2006 academic year but were only against the abuse of the Procurement Act.

On the PPB, the court said it failed to consider all relevant issues before approving the single-sourcing procurement making the whole process flawed.

"The PPB failed to consider all matters under (the relevant) section . The copyright issue cited to support the approval does not arise in this action," the court pointed out.

It expressed disappointment at the manner in which the GETFund Board conducted itself throughout the trial saying, "it refused to participate in the process since the court declined the application to strike its name from the process even though it was a necessary party."

Counsel for the GBPA, Jacob Acquah Sampson, , said after the ruling that "this should form the first point of reference in future developments."