After media pressure spurred on last week by daily Hospodarske Noviny, the contract for PR services worth a mere EUR 130 million that was recently awarded by the Ministry of Interior to the company Regionálna Obstarávacia Agentúra (ROA) will be cancelled, interior minister Robert Kalinak has announced.
The company, based in the tiny village of Horne Plachtince, won the contract to provide PR and consulting services to the ministry and its subordinate organisations. It would seem that the company was set up strategically, as the village has a small share in it, meaning it can officially deal with bigger tenders because it is at least part-owned by a public authority.
Now minister Kalinak says they would be cancelling the contract as there was a chance that the tender “was not real”. As always, cries of foul play could be heard from the opposition bench, with the Christian democrats KDH weighing in heaviest by planning an official investigation into the apparent crony ties between people at the ministry and the partners in the company. Not such good PR after all.
Richardp.
Our local rag ran an article about our cash strapped council struggling to balance the books – on the very next page was another article about a 6k refurb of ONE council office with photos of the sole occupant posing with her bespoke office furniture, complete with the cabinets full of ornaments, nic-naks etc. contempary art works, flat screen TV, HiFi system and her huge, built in, tropical aquarium – funded in part by the EU. There is no hope for this place!
Pigs in a trough – again!
Well the good news is that Fico has announced this expected windfall will be used to fix the pot holes and pay the teachers
130 million euros!!! I can’t imagine spending that much on tv ads, newspaper ads, radio ads. However, I can imagine spending it on consulting trips to Spain, media relations work at Milan Fashion week, office improvements or purchases in (insert name of Slovak village or town).
For those who lived during the Socialist/Communist times, the corruption and cronyism and the sheer amounts of Euros that have been siphoned off to create a Slovak Plutocracy are staggering and overwhelming compared to the “favours” that your local communist aparatchik received…..such as receiving his Lada 6 months early or a slightly better cut of beef from the local butcher.