Joseph Muhozi, Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) public relations officer threw the challenge over the weekend when speaking at the regional debate as part of this year’s Fiesta held in Sumbawanga Municipality, Rukwa Region.
Muhozi said that initiative is geared toward integrating young people into the job market, which solves the unemployment equation, combats poverty, and promotes inclusive economic growth. The youth population has been largely excluded from this sizable market due to minimal access to information on bids, understanding of procedures, and the ability to meet requirements.
He said that in accordance with Section 64 (2) (c) of Public Procurement Act Cap 410 (as amended) and Regulation 30 C of PPR of 2013 (as amended), all Procuring Entities (public bodies and any other bodies, or units established and mandated by the government to carry out public functions) shall set aside 30% of their Annual Procurement volume for the special groups. The distribution with respective percentages includes youth (10); disabled (10); women (5) and elderly (5).
“There lots of tenders offered by government and youth, women groups, who think that the money is for some people and companies and the current Public Procurement Acts (Cap 410) is very friendly to ordinary people and the disadvantaged groups,” a PPRA official said.
“Over 70percent of money approved by the house is going to public procurement, for instance, this year out of 41trn, 30trn/- goes into public procurement and all these tenders are open, competitive, fairly and without corruption to get value for money,” he said.
The procurement act wants all public entities to have 30 percent of their budget 30trn/- (which is 9trn/-) for youth, women, elderly and disabled.
In this case, he said: “Of the 9trn/-, youth need to be given 10 percent, where they ably to get 900bn/- and to get these tenders for the youth is very simple, as it requires them to be in a group of five to twenty people and register to district council so that we get to know them and know what they’re doing.”
“It also needs to be assured that they are Tanzanian youth through their NIDA IDs and get TIN number what they do and after that, they ask the registrar that they want to participate in government tenders and be enrolled in PPRA tendering system, the move is to be qualified to get a chance of getting this tenders; we’ve a system that is open for qualified people and get into the system and get access to the system and apply depending on what you do.”
The winner of the tender is announced publicly and criteria used to pick him/her and the one who is not satisfied has a room to appear for further decision, he said.
“And we came to understand that most youths are not well informed on the matter and that’s why we used this platform, to make youth aware of the matter and explore this initiative.”
Rukwa Regional Commissioner Queen Sendiga said: “There are lots of tenders’ opportunities as there are a number of development projects–road and airport construction: That’s why we’re encouraging youth in the region to grab the opportunities for their own development.”
The RC also suggested the need to provide in-house training for the government officials who deal with youths programmes, so that they can join PPRA move to sensitize youths to grab the opportunities in the PPRA’s tendering process.
“We have an example of young graduates in the Laela area, which asked for a council loan and bought three motorcycles and they paid back the loan within nine months. Some of them are engineers. They asked for bricks-making machines and they were given 50m/-. The procurement set aside budget for youth is another window that youths can benefit from,” RC Sendiga said.
