The Chisinau City Hall signed a contract for the setting up of parking lots on the streets of Chisinau with a private company to the detriment of the people, said civil activists Victor Chironda and Adrian Filat. In a news conference at IPN, the activists stated that the Chisinau City Hall transformed two projects to develop the urban infrastructure into a scheme for obtaining money from people in favor of private business entity, with founders in offshore areas.
Victor Chironda said they refer to the projects to reconstruct Chisinau streets with the loans provided by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Investment Bank. Owing to the implemented scheme, the people will pay twice more. On the one hand, the loans will be repaid with money from the municipal budget that is formed including of the people’s contributions. On the other hand, the people will pay for parking.
According to the activist, by signing this contract, the City Hall builds up parking lots with borrowed money intended for sidewalks and leases them out free to a private company. Some 90% of the revenues go to the business entity. “This is a second-degree theft. The residents of Chisinau haven’t yet received this money, but it is already stolen,” stated Victor Chironda.
The young man considers the project to set up pay parking lots will bring no advantages to the city and will not contribute to solving the problems of lack of parking places, traffic congestion and poor quality of the road infrastructure. On the contrary, within the given project the sidewalks will be turned into parking lots and this will worsen the state of pedestrian infrastructure.
Adrian Filat said the signing of the contract with the private company that is to manage the parking lots hasn’t been coordinated with the Chisinau Municipal Council. “This should have been signed only after its text had been approved by the Municipal Council. But this didn’t happen and the text of the contract contains a multitude of lacunas and very dubious clauses,” he stated.
According to him, a lawsuit was filed against the Chisinau City Hall. “We already asked the court of law to pronounce on the necessity of terminating the public-private partnership contract for the concession of the parking lots for a period of 25 years,” said Adrian Filat, noting that a hearing in this case is to take place in May.
The representatives of civil society said they will continue to make effort so as to obtain the termination of the contract or its modification. They will also carry out a campaign to inform the people about the given scheme. Within the campaign, there will be printed informative leaflets that will be distributed by volunteers. The activists also intend to inform the external donors about the created situation.
