According to Transparency, the newspaper of the Košice municipality is the fairest in Slovakia
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read a selection of ten around. news of the week from Košice and surroundings Send us tips on news, criticism or Facebook status of the week to [email protected].
1. Only a layman finds it easy to pass a deal to a relative, says the director of a hundred million company
In the case of a public company in the east of Slovakia, a change is planned after almost two decades. Richard Majza, a long-time member of the waterworks authorities, is a favorite to obtain the position of the company’s director. His nomination last week was challenged by several reports of tenders in which he may have been a candidate for director of conflict of interest.
Context: Stanislav Hreha will run for the Supervisory Board at the General Meeting of Východoslovenské vodárny on 1 March. After almost twenty years, he wants to end up as the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the company, which has an annual management of around one million euros and manages assets worth 600 million euros.
It is assumed that Richard Majza, the long-time head of the supervisory board, could replace him at the head of the waterworks. He has been the economic director of the waterworks since the new year, and as this contribution is incompatible with membership in the supervisory body, he has left the supervisory board. And in fact, he made room for Hreh.
Three examples of the problems of the old and new boss: In the past, the outgoing director of Hreh faced reservations that his relatives also earn on the contracts of the largest Slovak waterworks. When disposing of sewage sludge, even do business and officially violated the law – recorded Public Procurement Office. The contract for almost 5 million euros was won by the company JK Servis, in which Stanislav Hreh’s brother and cousin (Ľudovít Hreha and Jozef Farkaš) work.
Majz is still being talked about as a possible head of the waterworks, and he is also facing questions about his connection to VVS suppliers.
Majza Water Saddles have been on the supervisory board since 2009. The Žilina company has been their water supply supplier since 2008 and has millions of contracts there to this day. This is reminded because in 2009 a subsidiary ims – ITims was established in Košice. And Majza, who was already a member of the supervisory board of the waterworks at the time, became its managing director.
“The company slept, so to speak. She did not carry out any activity, she had no orders, no assets and I had no income, “Majza argued. diary Korzár. He claims that there was no conflict of interest because ITims did not have a contractual relationship with VVS. (Since 2011, Majza has been the owner of the ITims eseroča, he renamed it ERkorp.)
The Žilina joint-stock company also denies the connection to Majza.
However, ITims’ stores with Košice waterworks are definitely worth attention. In 2018, it won two contracts for a total of 7.6 euros (excluding VAT) for the supply of printers and computers without proper competition. VVS only invited three companies to submit a bid, even though it is a highly competitive market.
What about the waterworks? According to Korzár, the waterworks inspected the SAO’s inspectors “by explaining the absence of competition in such a way that the Public Procurement Act does not apply to contracts which do not relate to their main object of activity”. The supplier was therefore selected according to the internal guidelines of the waterworks issued by the General Manager.
Another controversial procurement is related to the company PSR Finance, in which the bodies include relatives of Majza and Hreh. According to Korzár, more than 12 years ago, the waterworks supplied up to dozens of cars for leasing. At the time of concluding the agreement, Majza was also a member of the VVS Supervisory Board prior to the presentation of the PSR Finance shareholding.
Majza and the waterworks did not specify how the company got to this contract. They also did not answer the question of how many cars, which and at what unit price they procured from PSR Finance.
“Even if at first glance it seems to the layman how easy it is to ‘pass the bomb business’ of this or that company, because there is a friend, wife, cousin, it is not possible,” Richard Majza responded. According to him, the water company selects the most advantageous suppliers and does not deal with whether the relative works for the supplier.
2. According to Transparency, the newspapers of the Košice municipality are the fairest in Slovakia
The monthly Košice v skratKE, published by the municipality, is Transparency International Slovakia, the best of the media published by Slovak cities. Until the evaluation in the project Trumpets 2021 84 town hall newspapers were included.
In its ranking, Transparency assesses in particular the extent to which newspapers complement public attributes and whether they are misused by newsrooms and mayors to campaign for public resources.
Key criteria include, for example, the controversy over town hall politics, objective and balanced content, or how often a large number of photos are supported in city newspapers.
When the Košice monthly started publishing last year, MPs criticized him that it would be a PR for the mayor for city money. However, according to the TIS assessment, these concerns have not yet been met. The non-profit organization emphasized that the city had the courage to take care of the monthly magazine for an experienced journalist (Mikuláš Jesenský) that the head of the town hall is not mentioned by newspapers often and that polemic views also have room.
However, not everyone accepted the Transparency statement with understanding. The mayor of Sídliska KVP wrote the reservations about the evaluation on Facebook Ladislav Lörinc, who is currently a city MP and a possible candidate for mayor. The non-profit reacted to his criticism by explaining that it did not claim that the Košice newspaper was ideal. That’s why he got only 77 out of a possible 100 points. The reserves are therefore considerable, “responded the non-profit.
Radničné noviny Banskej Bystrice finished behind the Košice monthly in the TIS evaluation, and Prešovský magazín is third. The Ťahanovské noviny is the most popular part of Košice (12th). The penultimate place (83rd) belongs to Humenské noviny.
3. They found a solution how to continue the construction of the Košice bypass
After all, the Košice bypass will soon start to be built. On Wednesday (February 16), members of the National Council approved an amendment to the Public Procurement Act, which will allow the amendment to enter into force after the President’s signature.
A question mark hung over the south-eastern bypass of Košice (Šaca – Košické Oľšany II) after the Public Procurement Office last year ordered the National Motorway Company (the contracting authority) to cancel the tender for a contractor. The winner of the competition was already known (Eurovia SK) and it was just waiting for the inspection to end so that the contract could be signed.
The decision of the Public Prosecutor’s Office upset Minister of Transport Andrej Doležal. He said that Slovakia could lose almost 140 million euros from this “formal nonsense” and that the Košice bypass would be postponed by several years after the cancellation of the competition. The National Highway filed an appeal, the council of the office had to decide.
Meanwhile, the minister cooled down, heard from the head of the ÚVO Miroslav Hlivák that he himself underestimated the control of the tender before its end, and came up with the thesis that even if a fine in millions of euros was to be paid for errors in the tender, it is a better and cheaper solution than canceling the competition. . .
And this is exactly the model offered by the approved amendment. The obligation of the ÚVO to check larger contracts for Eurofund projects before signing the contract fell out of the law. The result of the post-signature inspection only allows for the necessary fines, not the cancellation of the entire tender. So even signing with Eurovia will stop the decision on the appeal that the ÚVO Council has on its table.
Doležal and Hlivák emphasize that this is not a lex R2 (a law designed to help the Košice bypass), as the ÚVO has dozens of similar buildings on the table from the previous programming period, which also threatened not to run out of Eurofunds by the end of 2023. . was the trigger that generated the change in the Public Procurement Act.
According to the head of the ÚVO, Miroslav Hlivák, this is “a compromise between ensuring justice and more efficient drawing of Eurofunds, through which the quality of life in Slovakia has improved”.
4. The heat we discharge can be reheated
Košice company Energia Real