Illegal competition for SOS phone cancelled
Following our reaction Ministry for labour reversed the illegal competition for allocation of funds the organisation that provided SOS phone service for women victim of violence.
TS has not received an official response to the initiative, but the Ministry announced that “it rescind the decision to announce a public call for the association to provide phone services for women survivors of violence” which was adopted on November 10th this year.
As a reminder, TS in a letter to the Ministry and the Public Procurement Office pointed out that the provision of these services is to be conducted in accordance with the Law on Social Protection and the Law on Public Procurement.
The Ministry first announced tender on 31st of October 2017, and nine days later repealed, to be repeated on 10th of November 2017.
Since the procurement in this case was required, any decision of the Ministry to the distribution of money in other ways, through competition for civil society organisations, is contrary to the law, such a contract would be void under Article 168 of the Law on Public Procurement. Therefore, the only reasonable solution is to cancel the Ministry of competition and to support women victims of violence to ensure a lawful manner.
Beside the described violations of the public procurement tender, worth about 30 million, is debatable for other reason. Specifically, for the provision of SOS phone for women victims of violence Social Welfare Law provides for mandatory possession of a license. However, according to available data released by the organization Autonomous Women's Centre, at the time of the announcement of this competition no organisation on Serbia has not hold such a license, which the Ministry should be known, but according to the same allegations “a system for licensing these services is not established”.
TS in a letter to the Ministry indicated that, if it is considered that the provision of the Law on Social Protection, which regulates the implementation of public procurement, is not good, the Ministry may initiate the process for its amendment or not authorized to allocate the money from the budget contrary to mandatory standards.
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