KABUL(SW): Murtaza Rahimi, Deputy Director for Procurement at the Ministry of Interior, said on Sunday that more than 100 procurement contracts at the ministry have been fake contractors behind them.
He said since he has been appointed as the deputy director at the MoI, there have been 964 contracts on paper but none of them have been implemented.
Rahimi added 730contracts have been identified that are authentic out of which 89 contracts have been processed through the National Procurement Commission.
Rahimi was summoned by the Complaint Commission at the Masharano Jirga (upper house) following criticism by a number of businessmen and contractors that the MoI was not paying their debts.
The Commission had assured the protesters that MoI would put an effort to establish an accountable and transparent system so that fundamental changes would be brought up to the cadre of procurement department.
The contractors claimed last week that the Ministry has not paid their debts since 2012.
Rahimi said that contract system at the MoI was separate in each province in the past that led to some 5000 contracts being signed but currently the number of contracts are inked as packages.
He added that anyone could have made a fake lists of MoI requirements in provinces and the list would be approved by corresponding governor and police chief of the respective province in the past.
He further added that the contracts prepared in the provinces would now be sent to Kabul to be processed for getting money.
He also said that currently 89 percent of Afghan National Police (ANP) is paid systematically and a delegation from the MoI has travelled to 10 provinces to facilitate the salary of the Afghan Local Police (ALP) to be paid systematically because the MoI wants the money to directly go to the ALP officers rather than through commanders.
He said that over the years, most of the contracts were for foodstuff which was standardized and approved by the ministry of interior.
He said that the MoI has paid some of its debts and would do its best to pay the remaining as well.
Earlier, an investigative body released a report saying that more than 130,000 security forces personnel, especially police were fake but withdrawing salaries each month.
ENDS
