SPEAK OPENLY: ON TRANSPARENCY OF PUBLIC INVESTMENT IN ROAD INFRASTRUCTURE

Prishtina, 29 July 2011-Movement FOL held the next day debate of the Forum SPEAK Openly, discussing “On the transparency of public investment in road infrastructure,” at same time publishing the report on procurement in the Ministry of Infrastructure. Panellists in this debate were the Secretary General at the Ministry of Infrastructure, Mr. Skender Gashi, and Project Coordinator in FOL Movement, Mr. Fidan Kalaja.

Secretary General at this ministry, Mr. Skender Gashi, said that “we should promote transparency especially when it comes to public money.” He stressed that “in 2009, 207 projects were implemented by the ministry about, in 2010 about 92 of them and during the six month period this year 58 projects.” He stated that “internal control of public finances provides accountability of management ensuring compliance with relevant legislation, descriptions of the budget and financial management principles, transparent, efficient, effective and economical”. Regarding the contract for construction of highway Morine-Merdare he said “he was not involved in this process and that this contract goes beyond his powers as secretary of this ministry.”

Project Coordinator, Mr. Fidan Kalaja said that the Ministry of Infrastructure, except that leads regarding the budget that was allocated for capital investment, it also is leads for the number of contracts and their value. Only during the last two years (2009-2010), this Ministry has signed over 270 contracts, worth about 821 million euros, including a contract for construction of highway Morine-Merdare.

He emphasized that a special attention was paid to the analysis of procurement procedures selecting the supervisory company on the highway. According to him, the Ministry of Infrastructure on June 15 2011, has awarded the tender for the supervision of works on the highway to the company “Hill International”, the offer was 6 million and 950 thousand euros. In the announcement of the contract award of the Ministry was stated that the winner was announced the branch in Luxembourg of this American company. Two vice presidents of this company in America Mr. Robert L. Burnet and Mr. Mohamed A. El Zahab, worked for years in the American corporation “Bechtel”, which is contracted to construct the highway.

According to this report there are cases where companies which have won tenders have hired people from political parties or people who are close to them. Such cases are in the tender for vertical and horizontal signalling in national and regional network of the Republic of Kosovo where the winning company is the company “RSM”, a company where the parliamentarian Rexhep Selimi is getting paid. The other case is the tender for reconstruction of the road Llukafc – Tomoc where winning company “Victoria Invest International” in its background presents its relation with the politician Blerim Kuci. One of the winning companies of the tender “vertical and horizontal signalling in national and regional network of the Republic of Kosovo” is the company “Drenica”, where its owner, Mr. Ismet Shamolli who also is an official of “Eurokos” a company that has acquired one of the lots of this tender. According to the report in this year the Ministry of Infrastructure has continued with the compensation practices to the companies that have shown to be irresponsible and have delayed work on projects prior to MTC, as is the case with the company “Arda Rei”, which was contracted to accomplish the work of round junction. In the tender for summer and winter maintenance of roads, according to the report during the announcement of the winners of this tender the Ministry of Infrastructure has used the elimination criteria of companies.

This activity was made possible with the support of USAID through the Program for Strengthening Civil Society implemented by ISC – Institute for Sustainable Communities