The non-governmental corruption watchdog Aliancia Fair Play (AFP) conducted a study to determine whether state ministry officials were punished for wasting public resources in cases discovered by the Supreme Audit Office (NKÚ). Between 2009 and 2011, NKÚ auditors calculated that waste which occurred in five ministries amounted to more than €28 million. However, no state officials were held accountable, according to the ministries’ responses.
The TASR newswire cited the health, labour, foreign affairs, defence and interior ministries as being involved, according to information provided by AFP at a press conference on Thursday, June 27. For example, the Health Ministry paid €5,400 for legal services that its employees were supposed to be able to perform themselves according to their job descriptions. The Foreign Ministry paid €20,040 for a network operation system and basic IT services update that was supposed to last for 20 days, but which in fact took less than three hours to complete.
"The NKÚ found a total of 16 such cases of wasting public money, between 2009 and 2011," Pavol Lacko of Aliancia told TASR. AFP’s programme director Zuzana Wienk added that only the waste that was calculated was taken into consideration, not every instance of waste. She deemed it absurd that no-one was punished. She concluded that ministries often outsource services that they can – and are expected to - secure themselves.
(Source: TASR)
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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