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

Peja, July 23, 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 Peja 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 Peja Municipality. He further went on with the findings of the report of the municipality stating that during the first 6 months of this year Peja Municipality has announced 54 contract notices, 45 notices of contract award, 9 cancellation notices and 3 cancellation of the contract award. During this period the Procurement Review Body, has taken two decisions against the Municipality of Peja, in one of them even by approving the decision of the municipality but with procedural violations and which did not affect the final result, and the other by returning for re-evaluation. 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.

The Mayor of Peja municipality, Gazmend Muhaxheri said that the first step taken by him as the Mayor has been installing the camera in the procurement office which broadcasts online on the website of the municipality, in order to increase the transparency of the entire process. Regarding the evident problems, he went on to say that “exceptionally low prices are problems that accompany the procurement in the municipality of Peja and are also directly affecting the quality of work and abusing the public money, and it is a big concern that there are law gaps and we cannot take any measures in terms of this problem. “He further went on to say that exactly because of the growth of performance quality he has hired six new engineers specifically for the supervision of the enforcement of contracts and the municipal staff needs improvements in the context of professionalism.

After him spoke the Head of Procurement office Xheme Berisha, who said that the problems identified by FOL stand for Peja municipality as well and a greater professionalism and accuracy is needed also by the PPRC and PRB.

On the other hand Myhedin Sylqa, a member of assembly from Justice Party said that the biggest complaints of citizens are regarding the quality and performance of works and in this context, the municipalities should do more. These same complaints were mentioned also by Nazmi Krasniqi, a member of assembly from AAK.
Miradije Gashi from the association “Venera” said that the agreements between companies and their manipulation during the bidding process are directly impacting the quality of work and abusing the public money.