PS: Ministries Probably Plan to Build Some Infrastructure in Classified Mode

Bratislava, November 15 (TASR) - The opposition Progressive Slovakia (PS) party suspects that the Transport and Defence Ministries are planning to declare selected parts of rail and motorway infrastructure as strategic-defence infrastructure, which will allow them to prepare construction under classified conditions, stated PS transport expert Martin Pekar at a press conference on Friday. "We have serious suspicions that the defence minister [Robert Kalinak (Smer-SD)] and the transport minister [Jozef Raz (a Smer-SD nominee)] are planning to misuse the war in Ukraine. We think that they're planning to declare certain elements of rail and motorway infrastructure as strategic-defensive, thereby allowing themselves to reconstruct and build on such infrastructure under classified conditions, without public procurement. This would enable them to subcontract them to whomever they want; for example, to the Chinese," said Pekar, adding that PS considers this to be a dangerous step that would reduce transparency and creating room for corruption. am/df