The Road Fund must be distributed according to clear and transparent criteria based on the real needs, Minister of Transport and Road Infrastructure Iurie Chirinciuc said in a working meeting centering on the optimization of local road maintenance. He noted that the distribution of the money from the Road Fund will no longer be based on political criteria, IPN reports.
Iurie Chirinciuc expressed his dissatisfaction with the way in which the funds intended for road maintenance were distributed and used in 2015. “Some of the local public authorities received money, while others did not. I remained to work at the Ministry because an essential change is needed in the system so that the funds are distributed according to clear and transparent criteria, based on the real needs,” he stated.
Andrei Cuculescu, division head at the Ministry of Transport and Road Infrastructure, presented the general situation on the local roads. He said that the roads that are usually called local are longer than the public roads, being almost 7,000 km in length. Only 21% of the local roads are in a more or less normal state. The others are in a bad or very bad state. As there is no money, these roads are not regularly repaired. The bridges, especially the small ones, are not safe, while the quality of the performed repair work is doubtful also because of the shortage of funds. The financing for repairing 1 km of local roads is allocated non-uniformly.
On the other hand, even if the local public authorities could obtain sources for maintaining the local roads from other funds than the Road Fund, for example the Regional Development Fund, the Moldova Social Investment Fund and the Ecological Fund, their applications are often rejected because not all the road segments are managed by the local public administration.
Thus, the Ministry suggested that the local roads that ensure connection between districts should be transferred under the management of the local authorities of the second level, by simultaneously increasing the allocations from the Road Fund.
