SaS Blasts €8-million Tender for Consultancy Services on Bridge Repairs

Bratislava, July 18 (TASR) - The opposition SaS party perceives as wasteful a public tender on consultancy services for bridge repairs worth almost €8 million, launched by the Transport Ministry, and has called on Transport Minister Jozef Raz Jr. (Smer-SD nominee) to scrap it, SaS chair Branislav Groehling announced at a press conference on Thursday. "The Transport Ministry has launched a tender for external consultancy services for an incredible eight million euros. The same Transport Ministry that employs 1,500 people is offering eight million euros to someone who can advise it on how to reconstruct bridges in Slovakia," said Groehling. SaS vice-chair Marian Viskupic pointed out that the Transport Ministry is budgeting its own organisation, the Slovak Road Administration (SSC), which is supposed to manage the construction and reconstruction projects of first-class roads. "Despite having plenty of its own employees, despite the existence of its own organisation tasked with that very same purpose, the Transport Ministry has decided to spend an additional €7.8 million on consultancy services," warned Viskupic, adding that this constitutes the misgoverning of public resources. SaS also objects to a plan to repair bridges via public-private partnership (PPP) projects. "Repairing existing bridges via PPP projects would mean that these existing bridges, of which there are, let's say, about one thousand under state ownership, would need to be handed over to the ownership of private investors for, let's say, 25-30 years," said Viskupic. mf/df