As Makerere University enters its final day of the 4-day graduation, the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority (PPDA) has come out to open an audit into the graduation gowns to determine whether all the guidelines on local procurement were followed.
Speaking at a press conference yesterday(Thursday), Mr Uthman Ssegawa, the PPDA acting executive director, said that the gowns procurement was below UGX 1 billion which means it should have gone to local manufacturers.
“With respect to the gowns, the PPDA has contacted Makerere University to provide it with the procurement file. We understand that this contract was signed in February 2017 before our guideline. The PPDA laws allow that even if you have a contract it can be amended. So we anticipate that Makerere should have amended this contract to provide that the supplier who was contracted should buy or source the materials from Uganda. We are undertaking a contract audit to find out what went wrong in this particular procurement,” Mr Ssegawa said.
For the last couple of days, there was panic as Makerere University could not secure all the 15,000 gowns on time which made rounds on social media with different reactions from students and the public.
In summary, if the contract is found to have been breached, the issue will be forwarded to the university council for action, which may include terminating the contract and sourcing providers all over again.
