The Satellite can authoritatively reveal that the Senior Procurement Officers at the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education (MBSSE) including Mr. Mohamed Kallon have not committed any offence in the World Bank Support bids towards the Free Quality School Education (FQSE), His Excellency President Dr. Julius Maada Bio’s flagship programme.

According to our findings, all bidding processes go through normal procurement standards where all bidders or their representatives are always present before awarding any contracts.

The said procurement contract, which a cross section of media houses have been misleading the general public with intent upon blackmailing Senior Procurement Officers, has not been awarded yet.

Speaking to The Satellite, on of the Senior Procurement Officers, Mr. Mohamed Kallon, disclosed that during the bidding process, it was unanimously agreed that all the recommended bidders should submit two samples of each product that was going to be supplied.

He added that the project has acted accordingly and was awaiting the test results to proceed towards the contract or reject the samples.

Mr. Kallon averred that the MBSSE and the project have done the right thing by sending those samples to the appropriate government institutions empowered to carry out such mandate, noting that the recommended bidders should exercise patience and wait for the final test results instead of disseminating misinformation in the media about the project.

He furthered that there are procedures of awarding contracts but some disgruntled bidders who have failed to go through the right process want them to bend the rules for them and because they have resolved that they should not bend the rules, the unscrupulous bidders have hired the services of some attack-and-collect Journalists to not only discredit the entire bidding processes, but to also spoil the good opinion people have of the procurement officers.

"We’ll not succumb to any press attacks as long as we are doing the right thing in the procurement process,” Mr. Mohamed Kallon stressed.

He frowned at Journalists who do not crosscheck their information before going to press and end up misleading the public, noting that despite they have made tremendous efforts to explain to the media what they need to know about the bidding processes, some media houses have deliberately refused to know the true story about the entire processes.

Mr. Kallon however vowed to take legal action against media houses trying to dent their reputation by misinforming the public about the bidding processes.

Meanwhile, The Satellite has been reliably informed that an unscrupulous bidder who submitted one of the most unreasonable bids for the project is behind the negative publications against the bidding processes as well as the Senior Procurement Officers.

Read more on this issue in our subsequent editions.