{"id":6940,"date":"2021-12-09T09:36:21","date_gmt":"2021-12-09T09:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/cartel-monopolises-ncdc-tenders"},"modified":"2021-12-09T09:48:54","modified_gmt":"2021-12-09T09:48:54","slug":"cartel-monopolises-ncdc-tenders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/cartel-monopolises-ncdc-tenders","title":{"rendered":"Cartel monopolises NCDC tenders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Lesotho. <\/strong><\/span>Full-time employees at the National Career Development Centre (NCDC) also work for foreign private companies that do business with the centre, Public Eye can reveal.<\/p>\n

The employees\u2019 relationship with private entities, Public Eye was reliably informed, has helped establish a cartel which is monopolising NCDC multi-million Maloti tenders.<\/p>\n

NCDC is an agency under of the ministry of education and training which was established in 1980 to \u201censure the provision of quality and relevant education to the people of Lesotho\u201d, according to information on its website.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was to be met by providing a curriculum that would respond to the needs of the children in schools as well as the nation at large.<\/p>\n

\u201d<\/p>\n

NCDC was established after it had been realised that the temporary institution \u2013 Primary Curriculum Unit which later became Primary Curriculum Research Unit \u2013 established in 1974 curricula research, could not do so effectively unless it was transformed into a permanent institution.<\/p>\n

After it has developed new educational curricula for different grades, NCDC invites bids for writing, development, printing supply and delivery of textbooks and teachers\u2019 guides and other written materials concerning curriculum.<\/p>\n

The invitation for bids notice always specifies that \u201cbidding will be conducted through the national competitive procedures as specified in the Government of Lesotho Public Procurement regulations of 2007\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, this publication has established that companies that are always picked to write textbooks, have contracted NCDC employees as authors. This means the publishers effectively become just middlemen between NCDC and its own employees, therefore NCDC pays the publishers to do the job which is eventually done by NCDC employees.<\/p>\n

NCDC director, Sekhotsang Adam, acknowledged in an interview with Public Eye this week that some of the employees were contracted by private businesses doing business with the centre but said such employees had declared a conflict of interest and were therefore not part of the tendering process to procure textbooks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a declaration of conflict form which the employees fill in. When you have declared your status, you are sanctioned and cannot be part of the tender process,\u201d Adam said.<\/p>\n

She insisted that although some NCDC employees were contracted by private publishers doing business with the centre, awarding of tenders to the publishers remains above board.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe policy of the ministry of education and training is that we buy books from publishers and not from authors. We do not buy textbooks from the shelves because we need books which meet all our specifications,\u201d Adam said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe publishers work with their authors and how they get such authors and the terms of their contracts remains unknown to NCDC.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, we know that some workers here are such authors, in their personal capacities,\u201d she added. Adam also explained that the centre\u2019s employees who are authors were not allowed to be part of a team that evaluates textbooks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a monitoring and evaluation department, people working in this department are not allowed to be authors.<\/p>\n

And also, the team that evaluates the textbooks includes people from ECOL (Examination Council of Lesotho), LGE (Lesotho College of Education) and NUL (National University of Lesotho) assigned by the Ministry of Education<\/p>\n

\u201cThe team includes workers from our procurement and accounts departments but these are not authors.<\/p>\n

This means the authors do not influence the process and do not decide which textbook should be approved and which publisher should be awarded the job,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Asked why NCDC had decided to hire outside parties to perform services while it has skilled workers who can perform such services in-house, she explained that the ministry of education previously produced its textbooks until the government decided to privatize some services in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

In 1995, government decided to offload some of its enterprises to the public whom it deemed capable of running them in a profit-oriented manner through efficient management.<\/p>\n

The Privatization Act of 1995 was enacted. \u201cNow it is even more expensive to outsource textbooks and I have made a request to the ministry that we should go back to producing our own books.<\/p>\n

Textbooks are very expensive and that is one of the reasons many schools across the country do not books,\u201d Adam said. Privatisation was meant to benefit local companies.<\/p>\n

Public Eye<\/b><\/p>\n

has established that local publishers have probably never won a tender to write, print and supply textbooks to NCDC. Instead, the tenders are always won by foreign publishers which employ NCDC workers as authors.<\/p>\n

Adam explained that local publishers were not awarded tenders because they did not meet requirements. \u201cThey do not meet requirements. The Minister of Education is also worried that local companies do not benefit from this process and has asked that we look for ways to make it easy for locals to compete,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She also indicated that the foreign publishers were little more than a letterbox with no actual presence in Lesotho. \u201cThey just have small offices just so that they are able to tender,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Ministry of education\u2019s Principal Secretary (PS) for basic education, Dr Dira Khama, also acknowledged that some of the NCDC workers were contracted by businesses which do business with the centre.<\/p>\n

\u201cYesterday (Wednesday) I visited NCDC and one of the issues I raised is this one,\u201d Dr Khama said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a former teacher, we also used to write but we wrote for NCDC, not private publishers. The NCDC workers are skilled authors; they can lead teams of teachers, write those textbooks and be paid honorarium,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

For More News And Analysis About Lesotho<\/a> Follow Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Lesotho. Full-time employees at the National Career Development Centre (NCDC) also work for foreign private companies that do business with the centre, Public Eye can reveal. The employees\u2019 relationship with private entities, Public Eye was reliably informed, has helped establish a cartel which is monopolising NCDC multi-million Maloti tenders. NCDC is an agency […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":6939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,8,16],"tags":[233,246,502,245,1296],"class_list":["post-6940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-economy","category-homepage-english","category-twitter","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-lesotho","tag-development","tag-lesotho","tag-ncdc"],"yoast_head":"\nCartel monopolises NCDC tenders - Lesotho<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Full-time employees at the National Career Development Centre (NCDC) also work for foreign private companies that do bus ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/cartel-monopolises-ncdc-tenders\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cartel monopolises NCDC tenders\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Full-time employees at the National Career Development Centre (NCDC) also work for foreign private companies that do bus ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/cartel-monopolises-ncdc-tenders\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lesotho\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-12-09T09:36:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-12-09T09:48:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/sites\/62\/2021\/12\/img-61b1d0eaca718.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"522\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/cartel-monopolises-ncdc-tenders#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/cartel-monopolises-ncdc-tenders\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Cartel monopolises NCDC tenders\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-12-09T09:36:21+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-12-09T09:48:54+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/cartel-monopolises-ncdc-tenders\"},\"wordCount\":921,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/cartel-monopolises-ncdc-tenders#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/sites\/62\/2021\/12\/img-61b1d0eaca718.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Lesotho\",\"development\",\"Lesotho\",\"NCDC\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"economy\",\"homepage-english\",\"twitter\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/cartel-monopolises-ncdc-tenders#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/cartel-monopolises-ncdc-tenders\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/cartel-monopolises-ncdc-tenders\",\"name\":\"Cartel monopolises NCDC tenders - 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