The local public authorities of the second level ensure a low level of transparency in the public procurement process and only publish procurement plans. They do not post reports on public procurement transactions of a low value and, respectively, quarterly, half-yearly and annual reports on the monitoring of the implementation of public procurement contracts on their official websites, “Promo-LEX” Association has said.
The association monitored district councils, municipal councils (Balti and Chisinau), the People’s Assembly of the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia, executive authorities, such as the district head, mayor general of Chisinau municipality, mayor of Balti municipality and the governor of Gagauzia, IPN reports.
According to the monitoring report, the online communication channels continue to be most popular with the people in their intention to inform themselves about the activity of the local public authorities. These were used more often than in the first half of 2018. This refers mainly to social networking sites.
“Promo-LEX” noted regression in the relations between LPAs and the applicants for official information as the number of cases of provision of responses by violating the legal time limits rose from six to nine compared with the first half of 2018.
The experts ascertained a moderate positive state as regards transparency in contests to fill public posts. The LPAs that reported the organization of contests primarily met the conditions for publishing these by placing announcements and the conditions on their websites and in the media.
In the course of 2018, “Promo-LEX” established the people’s reduced involvement in the process of drafting local budgets. Only 44 of the 97 respondents from among the people said they took part in public debates on the draft budget of ATU Gagauzia for this year. According to the experts, this is an insignificant result even if it’s better than last year, especially because the interested parties include not only public associations and media outlets, but also business entities.
The monitoring of transparency of decision-making processes at LPAs of the second level and ATU Gagauzia was carried out between July 1 and December 31, 2018.