A roundtable discussion on the activities and problems of public procurement in Gjilan

Gjilan, July 24, 2014 – Today, FOL Movement has organized a roundtable discussion on the topic “Public procurement activities in the first six months of the year.” During this meeting was presented a report with summarized statistics on procurement activities in Gjilan Municipality.

Kenan Tora from FOL Movement said that the purpose of that meeting was to discuss the possible problems and irregularities that might go with the development of public procurement procedures in Gjilan Municipality. He further went on with the findings of the report of the municipality stating that during the first 6 months of this year Gjilan Municipality has announced 23 contract notices, 30 notices of contract award, 3 cancellation notices and 9 cancellation of the contract award. During this period the Procurement Review Body, has taken no decisions against the Municipality of Gjilan. Regarding the problems that are generally present in public procurement, he stressed the problem of non-standardization of the drafting process of the tender dossier, exceptionally low prices, non-coordination between different institutions and non-professionalism of evaluation committees.

Procurement department director Nazmi Halili, then said that the problems identified by FOL partly stand for Gjilan Municipality as well. He went on to say that as a procurement office they still have weaknesses in establishing contacts with PPRC and the gaps that exist in the Public Procurement Law are causing difficulties in implementing procedures. Regarding pressures from outside, he said that so far they have not experienced such a thing and that they are trying to be as transparent as possible towards citizens and interested parties.

Whereas, the Chairperson of the Municipal Assembly Valentina Bunjaku-Rexhepi, assembly member from LDK emphasized that for the new government, the debts inherited from the previous government are extremely challenging and that they are making maximum efforts for better management and preservation of public money. On the other hand as far as sending some files to the prosecutor by the opposition, respectively PDK, she said it has been more political marketing than it was practical.
Sami Hoxha, a representative of PDK in Gjilan said that as an opposition party, they are trying the best by using all the democratic instruments to be a genuine opposition and help the municipal government for better governance of municipality. He further said that it is too early to make assessment of the performance of the new municipal government of Gjilan.