The Herald
By Zvamaida Murwira
21 March 2012
Parliament yesterday took Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister David Coltart to task for awarding a textbooks supply tender to an international firm leaving out Zimbabwean companies.
Legislators said the decision will subject all primary school pupils to one school of thought for the next five years, the lifespan of the textbooks.
The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Education and Sports, chaired by Gokwe MP, Cde DorothyMangami (Zanu-PF), said there were several issues that raised eyebrows in the manner in which the minister handled the tender.
The textbooks were being funded by the Unicef under the Education Transition Fund.
Chitungwiza North MP Mr Fidelis Mhashu (MDC-T) said the tender bordered on “corruption as Longman Zimbabwe was merely used as a front for Longman International†(United Kingdom) ahead of local firms like Zimbabwe Publishing House, Mambo Press and College Press among others.
The committee said this while presenting a report in the House of Assembly. In its report, the committee noted that several stakeholders, including ministry officials dropped out of the meetings as they felt the process was not being handled transparently.
This saw Minister Coltart chairing the meetings himself.
It was noted that various agreed procedures were violated and these include, achieving least cost, promotion of local industry, equitable distribution of work between publishers and printers and ensure that there was no monopoly.
An advert for the tender was flighted just before Christmas in 2009 inviting printers to submit bids, a situation that saw other stakeholders like publishers not applying since they thought it was for printers.
Upon inquiry, publishers were asked to apply and were given less than 13 days.
“Tenders were publicly opened on January 18 2010 and only the content of the first two tenders were announced. The opening requirement to read out all tenders was bypassed. The details of the tender, which should have been read out at tender opening on 18 January were released after two months,†said Cde Mangami while presenting the report.
The tender was eventually awarded to a publisher and not a printer without explanation.
If ranking of unit price per page was applied, Longman would have won the right to supply only English and Shona textbooks while price per page would have seen Longman being awarded English, half of Maths and Shona while ZPH would have been awarded half of Maths, Science and Ndebele.
“Final tender adjudication results were never released as one would expect in accordance with the Statutory Instrument No 171 of 2002 which requires unsuccessful tenders to be advised of the name of the successful tenderer and the amount of his tender by the Board.
“Tender results were communicated to Longman Zimbabwe only through a contract signing ceremony without announcing results to tenders in writing,†said Cde Mangami.
“The failure by the minister to announce the winner of the tender was a clear sign that the tender procedure was not well followed and observed,†said Cde Mangami.
Contributing to the debate, Mr Mhashu said one challenge with providing school pupils with one school of thought is that it leads to conditioning and indoctrination.
“This will kill innovation and creativity, it retards learning. There was blatant, deliberate violation of the tender process. In this case Longman Zimbabwe was a front for Longman International UK and they have their printing firm in South Africa where they would bring the material duty free, that is corruption,†said Mr Mhashu.
He said awarding Longman the tender violated the indigenous laws of the country since the local publishing arm was merely a front of its parent firm in London.
As a result of this, said Mr Mhashu, primary school pupils will be subjected to routing and monotonous learning material as opposed to variety material.