The Bangladesh Government Tenderers’ Forum (BGTF) has sought urgent steps to clear their pending bills and amendments to Public Procurement Rules (PPR) for smoothly running development works for 2019-20 affected severely due to COVID-19 pandemic.
The forum made the demand at a virtual meeting of its convening committee with the Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU) under the Implementing Monitoring Evaluation Division (IMED) of the planning ministry on Thursday, said a press release on Friday, reports BSS.
Due to the prolonged shutdown amid coronavirus crisis, many of the tenderers are facing fund crisis, as their bills are not being cleared from the Auditor General (AG) Office.
Their procurement and construction cost is increasing gradually due to suspension of the ongoing works. Many of them are also counting high interests for bank loans.
Moreover, they cannot participate in the tenders invited recently as the banks are not in operation in many of their areas or giving service at a limited scale.
As a result, as many as 2.0 million workers in construction sector are jobless and passing very miserable lives with their families due to non-payment of wages. At the same time, tenderers are facing huge financial constraints as well as various social and other difficulties for this unprecedented crisis.
In this context, the tenderers sought immediate steps to allow the tenderers to avail of the stimulus package of Taka 72,000 crore announced recently by the government for recovery of their huge losses.
CPTU Director General Mohammed Shoheler Rahman Chowdhury attended the meeting as the chief guest.
CPTU Director (Training and Coordination) Shish Haider Chowdhury, Principal Project Management Consultant of the DIMAPPP Mosta Gausul Haque, Senior Communications Consultant of CPTU Md Shafiul Alam, BGTF Convener and Executive Engineer (Procurement) of LGED Md Abdus Sattar and BGTF Member Secretary and Managing Director of Mozahar Enterprise Kazi Mozaharul Haque spoke at the meeting.
Bangladesh Center for Communication Programs (BCCP) organised the meeting.
Shoheler Rahman Chowdhury said globally, for Covid-19, there is a move to make necessary amendments to PPR and in Bangladesh, the authority will also consider that.
BUILD CEO Ferdous Ara Begum, BCCP’s Senior Deputy Director Khadija Bilkis and BASIS President Syed Almas Kabir, among others, spoke.
