Skopje, 17 April 2024 (MIA) – Nearly €10 million is spent without transparency for procurements in schools, financed with money from the parents, shows a research of the Center for Civil Communications.

The research, conducted in 96 elementary and high schools in eight municipalities across the country, reveals that procurements for insurance, uniforms for the students, class photos, lunch, etc, have been completed in procedures lacking clearly defined rules that would have allowed the most favorable bids to be selected. Public ads are published only for field trips because the Education Ministry had adopted procedures for them in 2014. 

Most schools cannot explain how the firms, whose services are paid for by the parents, have been selected. The Center for Civil Communications points out that even in the schools that had provided decisions for the selection, the parents’ councils cannot determine how the bids had been collected, i.e. who had decided which firms should be asked for bids for procurements. 

“This comes as a result of the fact that the Education Ministry is yet to draft bylaws to regulate the way procurements are conducted in educational institutions that are not under the Law on Public Procurements. It allows the schools to lack transparency and accountability about how parents’ money is spent. The national strategy for the prevention of corruption and conflict of interests 2021 – 2025 envisaged that the Education Ministry should have prepared such bylaws (rulebooks) back in the first half of 2022 so as to reduce the vast opportunities for corruption and abuse of office,” said the Center for Civil Communications.

The research was conducted as part of the “Protection from Corruption” project, funded by the Dutch embassy in Skopje. 

Photo: MIA Archive