Each municipality is encouraged to establish principles and techniques to enhance transparency, appropriate to the local context and trends. Some basic recommendations might include that:
• bidders have access to the same information about a project;
• proposals must comply with some minimum requirements;
• prospective operators are prohibited from soliciting support from anyone involved in awarding the contract;
• collusion with other bidders is prohibited;
• amendments after the award of the contract are prohibited (unless essential due to unforeseen changes in the operating environment); and
• public reporting of amendments, and general reporting throughout the project cycle, should be as open as possible.
In addition, the appointment of external consultants to work with the municipality on the evaluation of bids is often a helpful step because they create confidence in the quality and independence of the process. In Gweru, the involvement of a USAID-funded consultant at various stages, but particularly at tender evaluation, helped to enhance public certainty that the process was legitimate (see Box 9.4). NGOs offer a useful instrument to help monitoring of procurement, tariff- setting and implementation processes. Municipalities could make use of this capacity to assist them in ensuring the ongoing public scrutiny of partnerships.
Often, national legislation or local regulations provide for contractors guilty of corruption, or of tax infringements, to be barred, temporarily or permanently, from future private sector participation or other government contracts. For such an approach to work effectively and fairly, care must be taken to put in place appropriate institutional arrangements (i.e., a body with powers of debarring). It is further important to clearly define in principle what activities may result in debarment, to offer a range of debarment penalties appropriate for different degrees of contravention, and to allow for proper appeal procedures.2