The role of procurement planning towards service delivery in public enterprises: case study Kayunga town council

Abstract

This study investigated the role of procurement planning towards service delivery in public enterprises: A case of Kayunga Town Council, Kayunga district, Uganda. The objectives of the study were: to establish whether there are procurement planning processes and procedures in Kayunga Town Council; to establish the role of procurement planning towards service delivery in Kayunga Town Council; to assess the challenges facing procurement processes in Kayunga Town Council and to examine the strategies of improving procurement functions in Kayunga Town Council. The study adopted a case study research design using both quantitative and qualitative approaches in data collection and analysis. A total of 82 out of the expected 100 questionnaires issued to the respondents were returned giving a response rate of 82%. The researcher used simple random sampling to select the councilors and community organization representatives and purposive sampling to select the town council staff. The instruments of data collection used included: questionnaires, interviews and secondary data. The study was also aided by SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) Version 17 and STATA Version 12 to generate measures. Study findings indicated that the majority of the respondents agreed that procurement planning and procedures exist but they were not followed thus implying that the role of procurement towards service delivery did encounter challenges in Kayunga Town Council which included non-compliance to rules and regulations governing procurement, corruption, poor accountability, lack of trainings, inadequate monitoring and evaluation, interference from politicians and limited allocation of resources to the units. On the issue of the procurement planning, processes and procedures, the findings indicated that a unit increase in staff competence of the procurement unit leads to scores of service delivery, also a unit increase in top management support leads to increase in service delivery. It was also found out that the strategy to improve procurement planning function in Kayunga Town Council was to avoid conflict of interest in the process of procurement and finally lower staffs were not involved in decision making in the study area. The study concluded that there was a positive relationship between staff competence in service delivery; positive relationship between top management and service delivery; positive relationship between procurement processes and procedures and service delivery and finally, there was negative relationship between challenges facing procurement planning processes, procedures and service delivery. The study recommended that procurement staff in the council need to have adequate qualification in procurement and training, management ensures there is clear procurement plan and followed, reduce conflict of interest and corruption, compliance to procurement rules and regulations. Further research needs to be conducted on the roles and responsibilities of the contracts committees in Kayunga Town Council in influencing procurement of goods and services.