Austrian company to build 300 waiting stations
“EPA MEDIA” Company from Austria will build 300 public transport waiting stations, following a tender announced by the municipality.
“EPA MEDIA” is the only bidder in the tender within the public partnership on building and illuminating stations, together with the possibility of placing outdoor advertisement. The Company is willing to invest EUR 8 mln in this project. The head of the Book Keeping and Economic Analysis Department, Eugenia Ciumac says that the Austrian firm engaged itself to pay MDL 6 mln to the municipal budget this year. Other MDL 9 mln are to be transferred in the next year.
The firm’s leadership announced that it can start the building of the waiting stations 24 hours after signing the contract, which is being concluded at the moment. According to Eugena Ciumac, the document is to be signed by the capital’s interim mayor, Vasile Ursu.
On December 28, when the deadline for submitting offers for this tender expired, the City Hall prolonged the participation term by 20 days, for the reason the Austrian company was the only one to announce its participation. At that moment, the investor stated that in this case it would recall its offer, invoking a problem of trust towards the local public authorities in Chisinau. The negotiations with the City Hall concerning the construction of waiting stations lasted 4 months.
In the opinion of the interim mayor, Vasile Ursu, local companies didn’t participate in the tender because of “too tough participation conditions and the municipality’s great requirements”. According to the source, the municipal budget will benefit from only MDL 1 mln this year from placing advertisement by local companies. At the same time a real chaos is created in the city in this domain. Ursu claims that it is impossible now to cooperate with these companies which, as he affirms, do not contribute to the budget and do not bring anything useful to the city. In turn, the Austrian company will build those 300 waiting stations, and the municipal authorities will propose the foreign investor to build stations in the municipality’s suburbs, Ursu added.
The interim mayor stated, as part the tender commission’s session, that there are 2700 up to 4000 ad stands in the city, and the local public administration extended authorisations for this year only for 1700 of them.