The vice mayor and councilor for Contracting pointed out yesterday in a municipal commission that they went from signing 11,827 in 2019 to 5,332 in 2021
After just over a year fallow, the Special Commission for Surveillance of Contracting met yesterday at the City of Murcia, focused on the signing of minor contracts. It had the deputy mayor and councilor for Contracting, Mario Gómez, and the PP councilors (former government partners in the City Council) as the main protagonists with exchanges of reproaches.
Gómez defended that since the new municipal government team (PSOE-Cs) is in charge, these types of contracts have been halved: from the 11,827 that were signed in 2019 (the year before the pandemic) to the 5,332 signed. last year. The Commission also reported that in money, this had meant reducing its amount to 18,318,935 euros, compared to 28,452,064 in 2019.
For the Socialist Councilor for Economic Management, Enrique Lorca, these data “are the result of better management and greater transparency in the City Council, where there was a clear abuse of minor contracts.”
The PP considers that the Christmas lights contract has cost a million more than the previous one to the municipal coffers
The orange mayor, for his part, announced that the Commission will meet again in March “to continue monitoring public procurement in a transparent manner.” And he recalled that the objective of the same is to ensure that the successful bidders comply with the provisions of the specifications.
Both stressed that the City Council will analyze the contracting irregularities indicated by the Prosecutor’s Office “to take corrective measures”, with internal protocols that improve control and administrative procedures, improving the quality of service for citizens.
Criticism of the popular
The popular councilors, who accused Gómez of being incoherent for using “more” than they did the figure of the minor contract that he had criticized so much, focused their interventions on formulating their doubts about the legality of this year’s Christmas lighting contract. They calculated that it caused economic damage of more than a million euros for the municipal coffers.
They also raised another suspicion about the legality of that contract, “whose specifications and technical report are only signed by the Citizens councilor, without the signature of any technician, which denotes discretion and lack of rigor.” They added that it lacked a market study and that a crime of unfair administration could have occurred, without ruling out legal action.