By Sam Sophorn and Long Navanny
Mr. Sam Sophorn and Mr. Long Navanny were fortunate enough to travel north to Siem Reap Province, in order to attend the HEQCIP training workshop on Procurement for Sub-Projects. The funding for this project was obtained using public funds and therefore procurement officers have very specific guidelines they must follow in order to ensure that the public money is being used wisely and will benefit the future generations of Cambodia. This conference sought to train procurement officers in the proper practices of procurement and to give constructive feedback to HEIs on how to balance procurement tasks with HEI tasks.
The three day conference was opened with a speech by Dr. Un Leang, Deputy Director of Department of Higher Education and the head of Component 2, where he remarked on the trend of procurement moving from simple shopping to following strict procedure and the awareness of important issues such as, transparency, morality, environmental protection, gender and labor abuse. The first day of the conference consisted mainly of training seminars based on reviewing the standard operating procedure (SOP) of procurement and general procurement procedures for goods and works.
The second day of the conference gave the participating Universities an opportunity to present a procurement document to the conference and receive feedback. UC’s Mr. Sam Sophorn presented a bidding document for package NS-G-43R3 (the procurement of office equipment). The document received much praise, with over 80% meeting the specific requirements for procurement documents, being asked only to ensure that the document does not lead to a particular preference for brand name products – thus ensuring that public money is being spent to purchase the most cost effective materials rather than spend unnecessary money to obtain specific brand names. Mr. Sam Sophorn and Mr. Long Navanny were happy to receive the feedback and hope to apply what they have learned in preparing future procurement documents.
