The public procurement procedures at education institutions in Chisinau are organized and staged with serious violations, starting with the incorrect filling out of the participation invitation and ending with the lack of monitoring of the implementation of the signed contracts. A monitoring report to this effect was presented by the Association “Solidary Parents” in a news conference at IPN on February 13.
The Association’s head Ala Revenco said there is no real competition in the foodservice sector. Five large companies hold 95% of the foodservice market. “The contracting authorities accept the situation as they want the institutions to be formally provided with foodservices without taking measures to ensure a higher quality of the products served to children,” stated Ala Revenco. After monitoring three public tender contests to contract foodservices to the value of 70 million lei, it was established that by only one bid was submitted for all the 90 lots specified in the Request for Proposal.
Among other identified deficiencies, besides the lack of real competition, are the method of assessing bids, which is based on the volume of calories, differentiated treatment of bidders, non-informing of the working group members about the date and hour of the bid assessment meetings and inclusion of erroneous data in the database of the Public Procurement Register.
Bidding expert Valeriu Ciorba spoke about a procurement procedure to the value of 20 million lei held by the Division of Education, Youth and Sport of Rascani district. He said that 17 companies took part initially in the tender contest. Two of the companies were later disqualified as they didn’t have the required documents. Six days later, all those involved were informed by a letter that the bid of a company was re-included as the missing documents were found. This is at least strange.
Carolina Chirilescu, a member of the Association “Solidary Parents”, said the menus are not published in schools and on the website of the Public Health Center. Some of the menus do not contain fresh fruit and the price of products is not posted.
The full monitoring report will be presented in a public event on February 20.
