VALENCIA. The impact of the coronavirus pandemic it has been noticed and much in the administrations, which suspended all the terms during the confinement at the same time that they had to ensure the provision of many services and the start-up of other urgent and necessary ones to cushion the pandemic hit in the social fabric, especially in the most needy people. For this, it has been used a much more agile procedure than usual, when making many contracts for the emergency route.
Without going any further, the Valencia City Council has used it at least a hundred occasions since the alarm status was declared and you have spent at least 3.2 million euros. They are contracts of all kinds: from the provision of hygienic material to the purchase of breakfasts and food for the elderly and in vulnerable situations, including accommodation rentals to ensure confinement to homeless neighbors or even cleaning and disinfection services in public spaces and dependencies. municipal.
You can also find others related to publicity and awareness campaigns about the pandemic or concerning the implementation of telework: purchase of webcams, laptops, mice or “problems arising from the use of telework by City Council personnel”. And in addition to all of them, in addition to the aforementioned 3.2 million, the beach control service has been awarded to the Red Cross for 1.3 million euros, after the Department of Beaches, led by Giuseppe Grezzi, desist in the public tender for administrative delays as a consequence of the pandemic.
For all of them, a route contemplated in public sector contracting legislation has been used: article 120, which exceptionally allows administrations to process emergency contracts, exempts from the obligation to create a contracting file and empowers to execute what is necessary to satisfy the supervening need and “freely contract its object” without submitting to the parameters of the ordinary contracting, not even regarding the existence of sufficient credit. In this case, a budget line could be provided in the aftermath.
All this always because of “catastrophic events, situations of serious danger or needs that affect the national defense”, as the coronovirus pandemic has been considered in the successive decrees published by the state government.
Thus, of the hundred contracts practiced by the Valencia City Council through this route, the awards stand out to the signature Sociosanitary Management of the Mediterranean, for a total value of more than half a million euros, for home help for the elderly in the city. An amount similar to that received by the Red Cross for the social health care services for the elderly, the distribution of healthy food among this sector of the population and awareness programs for de-escalation.
Behind are others like Novaterra Catering -for the feeding of homeless people and home delivery for the elderly- with more than 260,000 euros; Povinet -for home help to older people-, with 160,000 euros; or Levantine dining rooms Isabel -for the elaboration of food kits-. In total, the list registered by the municipal group of Citizens amounts to 103 contracts with 53 successful bidders different. Among them there are services started in the month of March and which later had to be hired again to maintain the benefit.
The total amount of the disbursed in these months is much higher than that explained, since some contracts offer the price per person served or per week of benefit. All in all, the spokesperson for Citizens, Fernando Giner, He denounced that after a question from his municipal group, the local government team collected 33 contracts out of a hundred that have been detected in the internal computer system of the City Council.
Likewise, Giner censured that the Valencia City Council has not published these emergency contracts on the municipal website as they do other big cities. “When we have asked about these contracts, they have not been able to list them and refer us to the Public Sector Contracting Platform, place where not all contracts are published, nor does emergency contracting have a specific treatment, “he lamented.
In this sense, although the spokesperson orange He said he understands the need for immediate contracting, requested that “once the state of alarm is over, the contracts have an exclusive space in the profile of the contractor on the municipal website, as they have municipalities such as the Madrid and Barcelona“Certainly, both localities have a section on their platforms where they post an updated list of the emergency contracts signed these months by the pandemic.
A diligent transparency that, in fact, according to the spokesperson orangeTwo agencies under the Ministry of Finance have already requested, such as the Independent Office for the Regulation of Procurement or the Advisory Board for Public Procurement.
For Giner, from the relationship collected in Valencia by the municipal group “it is striking that the largest emergency expense for the coronavirus has been from the 1.3 million beach lifeguard contract, a contract that was being processed ordinary and that due to Grezzi’s negligence, he had to cancel and hire at the last moment, ”he said.
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