A sad tale of nepotism, wasted money and incompetence
An inspectors’ report for the regional authority of Central Macedonia paints a pathetic picture of the system of evaluation, control and follow-up assessment of a number of projects funded under the European Union-subsidized Second Community Support Framework (CSFII) for the period 1994-2000. The report highlights serious flaws in administrative mechanisms for the way public money is spent, pointing to favoritism and the makeshift mentality that permeates public administration at a time when the government, in the words of the prime minister himself, takes pride in its efforts to push the country along the road to convergence with its EU partners. The document refers to five projects inspected in September of last year; their cost was not high (2.57 billion drachmas or 7.5 million euros in total) but they are fully indicative of the magnitude of the problem. They were the Morniotiko Gorge project (the cost of which represented about 60 percent of the total for all five projects); the Veterinary Laboratory in Kastanies, Kilkis; the Thessaloniki Regional Center for Classification and Standardization of Cotton; the Thessaloniki Regional Center for the Protection and Quality Control of Plants, and Thessaloniki’s Laboratory for Animal Feed Circulation Control. The report attempts to outline the behavior of various agencies involved in the establishment of the projects and charges the regional authority of Central Macedonia with inadequacy in terms of organization, administration and operation in monitoring and implementing the projects. Those who were supposed to have exercised central control admitted that they did not know what the status of the Morniotiko Gorge project was and said that they had never visited the veterinary laboratory nor knew what became of it. The inspectors’ report comes to the conclusion that the project should not have been approved for funding and proposes that those responsible be asked to return the money. Characteristically, the report notes that the gorge project was not supervised by a civil engineer but by a forestry graduate. No account whatsoever was taken of the possible environmental impact of the project. In order to cover up this omission, says the report, «attempts are being made in concert with the prefectural authority to expand (sic) the environmentally unfavorable activities.» The veterinary laboratory was constructed in 1996 but no one has taken ownership and it has almost fallen to ruin, though, the report points out, a number of individuals were in a rush to draw funds for it in 1994; now its locks are rusting and there are plenty of faults in the construction. The story of the facility borders on the tragicomic: The Central Macedonia regional authority refuses to hand over the building, the Kilkis prefecture’s agricultural department refuses to accept delivery, siting the construction faults, and the Agriculture Ministry has still not appointed the staff to man it. The authors of the report consider the building completely unusable and urge the Agriculture Ministry to seek the return of the 160 million drachmas (470,000 euros) spent for its construction. They also point to administrative deficiencies and lack of specialized personnel, stressing that the problem is not limited to administrative procedures but is also in the «quality of administrative judgement, linked to the inability of the staff to resist established practices.» The biggest share of the responsibility, according to the authors, belongs to the Agriculture Ministry and the regional authority of Central Macedonia, which, besides the lack of strategy, are filled with committees without proper knowledge of the subjects they have been assigned. The report suggests placing specialists in key positions which would make a break with the past practice of compromising quality by ignoring meritocracy in appointments.
