Investigating the effectiveness of public procurement practices at the Public Works Department in the Midlands region.

Abstract

Public procurement has an obligation to deliver services and ensure that its departments and entities perform at an optimum standard. There has been less research on public procurement practices in public works, hence the motivation behind this study is to uncover current procurement practices that hinder the objectives of public procurement. The aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of public procurement practices at the KZN Department of Public Works (DPW) in the Midlands region of South Africa. The study adopted qualitative research approach, an exploratory research design to gain insight on the effectiveness of public procurement practices at the KZN DPW. A purposive non-probability sampling method was utilised for selecting the eight participants. The study used thematic analysis and three themes were derived from the research. The findings revealed that the current procurement process at KZN DPW is based on the national treasury practice notes, instruction notes and the supply chain management policy, regulations and departmental standard operational procedures. It was also found that the departmental procurement practices were failing to achieve their primary objectives as projects remained unapproved for long time because of poor internal tender system. It was also found that KZN DPW was ineffective in bridging the gap between who is hired and what is delivered, mostly due to lack of transparency and corruption. The research findings also revealed that lack of technical knowledge and skills, lack of capital, lack of technical tools and lack of highly skilled people are barriers to effective implementation of procurement systems at KZN DPW. New systems were introduced to utilise yet there was less or no training provided to the employees beforehand. It is recommended that KZN DPW provides an adequate environment that promotes fair and equitable treatment for potential suppliers when advertising tenders and reviewing quotations. It is also recommended that KZN DPW institute some regular internal financial, internal audit or management controls using independent officials, not those undertaking the procurement. The implementation of the cited recommendations would yield improved effectiveness of public procurement practices at the KZN DPW, Midlands Region in South Africa.