Although the city government declared the procurement of 25 trams from Turkey a great success two years ago, the Center for Local Self-Government says that the citizens are half of those tram they don't even drive, because Belgrade The rails don't even come out.
Zoran Alimpić, a member of the City Election Commission and former president of the Belgrade City Assembly, points out that it is evident that there is a problem with quality, but also with the disputed tender won by the Turkish factory Bozonkaja.
"Two years ago, the city government declared the procurement of 25 trams a great success, even though the tender was drawn up for the Turkish factory Bozonkaja, and the work was worth an unrealistic 67 million euros, excluding VAT. But the irony of fate is that citizens do not ride those trams to this day," stated the director of CLS, Nikola Jovanović, in a written statement.
She added that the explanation "is both simple and sad at the same time: because they have a large number of breakdowns and complaints that are not resolved, so only between 12 and 14 trams leave the depot of the City Transport Company (GSP) daily on average".
Zoran Alimpić assesses that there is an "inconvenient situation, because of the 25 new trams that arrived last year - a large number are not in traffic".
"Almost half of them constantly have problems, i.e. malfunctions and complaints that are slowly resolved. It seems that those trams are not of high quality, and many of us did not even know about the Turkish factory Bozonkaja before, their trams are rarely used in Europe," said Alimpić N1.
Fixed tender
He also pointed out that it turned out to be true what they claimed from the GSP trade unions - "that the tender for those trams was written and set up so that only those trams could go through the tender".
"And we didn't get them cheap either, what's more, we got them at a very expensive price. It's easy to investigate that those trams were a million euros more expensive per piece than what other cities buy, for example Timisoara. I think the Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime could also investigate this, because there are indications that corruption is involved," said Alimpić.
Alimpić reminds that in the meantime "another tender, or two, has been announced".
"For the purchase of 100 new trams, so that tender was canceled last year. Then another one was announced this year for 85 new trams and for which there were complaints from other producers from Europe that it was rewritten so that only Bozonkaja could win that tender. And we have a lot of old trams in Belgrade and we need to replace them," said Alimpić.
Alimpić also points out another problem related to the trams bought from the Turkish manufacturer - and that is their width.
"The problem is their width, they are slightly wider than the widest trams on Belgrade streets, at some intersections they cannot pass each other, so they wait for each other," said Alimpić.
As he says, "if we are going to give preference to a manufacturer, it is logical that it should be the Siemens factory in Kragujevac".
"They make high-quality trams, which are used in German cities, I guess they are good for Belgrade as well. But for some reason the city government did not make a tender for those trams to reach Belgrade, and that would be useful because the money would stay in Serbia. After all, this is a general thing for all other procurements, at the level of the whole country," concludes Alimpić.
Source: H1
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