Centralising govt's tender system will root out corruption

(Image: GCIS)

In an interview with the national broadcaster on Sunday, Zuma told SABC the fight against corruption would be better won when there was a central tender board in place to deal with all tenders. It would also make it easy to police corrupt officials.

Zuma was responding to a question regarding his announcement that government had decided to establish a central tender board to adjudicate tenders in all spheres of government.

He made the announcement during his sixth State of the Nation Address on Thursday.

The board, he said, will work with the chief procurement officer whose main function will be to check on pricing and adherence to procedures as well as fairness.

"The problem is that if you spread the tender system across all spheres of government, you have got too many fingers everywhere. It is difficult to control that," he said.

Zuma said the problem with having too many panels deciding on their own tenders was that it exposed the system to infiltration by corrupt officials, which often led to people in the entire tender system being perceived to be corrupt.

With the new system, corruption - if it happened - would be limited to one board and easy to investigate.