On 26th December 2019, the Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU) of Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED), Ministry of Planning, organized a Divisional Workshop at the Conference Hall of Sylhet Circuit House titled “Citizen Engagement in Public Procurement”.

Sharing experiences gained from the field on citizens’ monitoring of public procurement and capturing recommendations from relevant stakeholders were the objectives of the workshop. The Chief Guest was Secretary, IMED, Mr. Abul Mansur Md. Faizullah, ndc.

In the Chief Guest’s speech, Mr. Abul Mansur Md. Faizullah said, “The objective of Public Procurement is to improve the living standard of citizens. Hence citizens play an important role in establishing transparency and accountability in public procurement. It is also their right to know how transparent public procurement is.

Both the importance and size of public procurement have increased, and these will continue to grow. That is why government is giving importance to increasing transparency and skills. A favourable environment can be created in public procurement by providing information to citizens taking their opinions, he added.

The special guest, Mr. Md. Ali Noor, Director General, CPTU, said in his speech, “CPTU has undertaken reforms in procurement project since 2002. We started e-GP in 2011. We did not only restrict our developmental work to digitization, but we have also taken up the job of increasing knowledge and awareness on procurement and engaging citizens.”

Another special guest present at the event was the Sylhet Divisional Commissioner Md. Mostafizur Rahman. After the welcome speech by Director of CPTU, Shish Haider Chowdhury, Team Leader of Brac Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), Mr. Mirza Hassan shared a presentation on Citizen Engagement in Public Procurement. The event was presided by the Sylhet Deputy Commissioner, M. Kazi Emdadul Islam.

On the second part of the workshop, the opportunities and challenges of public procurement, current strategy of citizen engagement in public procurement were heard through the opinions of citizens. Relevant local government officials, tenderers, local citizens, citizen monitoring group members and other concerned representatives took part in the workshop.

Through “Digitizing Implementation Monitoring and Public Procurement Project (DIMAPPP)” the CPTU has been implementing engagement of citizens in public procurement in 48 upazilas of the country. BIGD has been working as an advisor to CPTU on this project. BIGD has been assisting in engaging citizens in public procurement by establishing a model of monitoring with the help of local citizens.

BIGD has been implementing 2 different strategies simultaneously at field level on citizen engagement in public procurement, and the target of this is to find out the most effective method in terms of field experience. In most of the Upazilas, a citizen group is formed with the people living near the site whose duty is to monitor the progress of work in that site and to inform relevant officials of any irregularities. This group is known as the Citizen Monitoring Group. On the other hand, no groups have been formed and the monitoring job has been assigned to the local citizens.