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How to prevent corruption in an open tender?

LETTER | A few months before I wrote and posted my article namely Best to follow World Bank's procurement guidelines.

If the previous BN government had wanted to accept bribes, even the World Bank’s guidelines could not prevent corruption.

When any contract is worth several billion ringgit, the contractor can spare several hundreds of millions to bribe the officials who have to power to award the contract.

Here are seven ways to prevent corruption:

1. Pakatan Harapan Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad must appoint honest ministers who must appoint honest people to the tender board to evaluate tenders and the minister in charge must always supervise the tender process to prevent corruption.

2. Split the whole project into smaller contracts so that more contractors can qualify to tender. If only a few contractors are invited to tender, it is easier for the few contractors to collude or come to a secret understanding.

3. The minister must not allow the official-in-charge to invite a few of his cronies to tender. Always publish in the newspapers when inviting contractors to pre-qualify to submit their tenders.

4. If all the contractors are pre-qualified to tender, only the cheapest tender should be given the contract.

5. All tenders must be open and the bids made by each contractor must be published to show that the cheapest bid was awarded the contract.

6. Never allow officials to invite contractors to submit their proposals for any project because each contractor would have his own proposal. The tender committee cannot compare the price of an apple with that of a pineapple.

7. Always appoint an engineering consultant who has the necessary knowledge and experience in this type of project to come up with the design and specifications for all the pre-qualified contractors to tender.

If all the contractors are pre-qualified, the cheapest contract should be given the contract.

Remember honesty is the best policy.


The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.

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