Print version | Sep 28,2019
The state-owned specialty printing company, the Educational Materials Production & Distribution Enterprise, secured a 14 million Br project from the Central Statistical Agency to print training and promotional materials for the upcoming national census.
The Agency awarded the contract as part of its 3.5 billion Br total budget for completing the census. The census is scheduled to be carried out starting from April 7, 2019, and running for three weeks.
The printed material will be prepared in five regional languages - Amharic, Oromo, Tigrigna, Somali and Afar – and will include brochures, posters, calendars, stickers, booklets and questionnaires.
"Considering the urgency of the issue, we made a direct procurement to save time," said Taye Retta, director of printing services at the Agency, which has conducted three censuses between 1984 and 2007.
In the interim, the population has grown exponentially by 25.5pc and 37.9pc in the second and third census years, respectively. With the upcoming census, the Agency projected that the population growth would rise to 94.3 million.
Setegne Gelan, communications director of Public Procurement & Property Administration Agency, confirmed that the Agency had received a waiver to make a direct procurement.
"Even though the Agency was supposed to plan and make the procurement early, we gave them an exception for the direct procurement considering the urgency of the work," said Setegne.
Before awarding the project to the Enterprise, the Agency approached Berhanena Selam Printing Enterprise, another state-owned printer, which offered a bid twice as high as the winning company, according to Taye.
"In the process, we also considered quality and delivery time as criteria to select a company," said Taye.
After two months, the Enterprise, which operates under the Ministry of Education and prints educational material and textbooks for all levels of teaching institutions, secured the deal with a delivery time of one month.
Habtamu Berhanu (PhD), a lecturer at Addis Abeba University's College of Business & Economics for more than a decade and a half, agrees with the decision made by the Agency to block loopholes from lengthy procurement procedures.
"The speedy procurement process helps the Agency to perform under the scheduled time frame and control costs," Habtamu said.
To be conducted in two months, the census will be carried out by 182,000 people, of which 145,000 will be poll takers, 35,000 controllers and 2,000 employees recruited from various offices. The trainers, poll takers and controllers have been drafted from among teachers, agricultural and health extension workers and the census commission.
Last year, the Agency procured 180,000 tablets and 126,000 power banks through the Public Procurement & Disposal Service at a cost of 663 million Br. The gadgets were procured to digitise the process.
Currently, the Agency is uploading census maps, questionnaires and data analysis applications on the tablets preparing for the census, according to Taye.
The Enterprise prints master's level examinations papers for higher education institutes using its secure printing machines.
“Universities and regional educational bureaus are our main customers,” said Girma Regassa, marketing director at the Enterprise.
PUBLISHED ON
Feb 16,2019 [ VOL
19 , NO
981]
Print version | Sep 28,2019
Fortune News | Jun 23,2019
Print version | Mar 30,2019
News Analysis | Aug 28,2021
Fortune News | Sep 06,2020
Radar | Dec 25,2018
Print version | Sep 08,2019
Fortune News | Feb 29,2020
Radar | Feb 02,2019
Fortune News | Jan 12,2019
November 27 , 2021
Against my will, I have witnessed the most terrible defeat of reason and the most sa...
November 13 , 2021
Plans and reality do not always gel. They rarely do in a fast-moving world. Every act...
October 16 , 2021 . By HAWI DADHI
Residing in a country with no capital market, an organised marketplace for trading se...
August 28 , 2021 . By HAWI DADHI
The streets of Addis Abeba are as varied as they are many, although too many of them have yet to be named. From the narrow alleyways of the...
January 15 , 2022
Foes and friends of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) agree that his administration is...
January 7 , 2022
There has not been much research to put a number on high costs wars inflict on Africa...
January 1 , 2022
It is a norm to emphasise grand structural changes to address the myriad political pr...
December 25 , 2021
In the words of Herbert Hoover, the 31st president of the United States, it is older...
Put your comments here