Young Roma - Herceg Novi: Zenka to review or annul the Decision on the distribution of funds

The Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Mladi Romi - Herceg Novi today ordered the Minister for Human and Minority Rights Mehmed Zenka to once again consider or, as a last resort, cancel the Decision on the distribution of funds for the financing of NGO projects/programs in the field of protection and promotion of human and minority rights. , protection of the rights of Roma and Egyptians for 2020.

They added that they appreciate that the distribution of funds by that Decision was not done in accordance with the law and in the public interest.

"Having in mind the work of all organizations in Montenegro that deal with the issues of the Roma and Egyptian population, and whose work we closely follow, we express a well-founded suspicion that the adoption of this Decision was accompanied by considerable non-transparency in decision-making, bias, which violated the law and which indicates to us the possibility of the existence of certain corrupt actions during the process of making this Decision. Looking at the adopted Decision, as well as in the previous ones from 2019 and 2018, we note that most of the same organizations or interconnected ones receive projects whose work is not transparent, which leads to suspicion that the funds were not spent for the intended purpose , and that the results of the supported projects do not make a concrete contribution to the inclusion of Roma. Some organizations were founded quite recently, two of which were founded last year, so it is unclear on the basis of which criteria you determined their capacities for the implementation of projects," the statement of the NGO Mladi Romi points out. - Herceg Novi signed by Samir Jaha, executive director.

The statement adds that they are particularly concerned about "the fact that the work of most of the above-mentioned organizations is not recognized among the Roma and Egyptian communities themselves, which once again casts doubt on the way these projects are implemented."

"Based on our findings (about which we can inform you in great detail), most organizations perform their work in an extremely non-transparent manner. Apart from the information that we can find on your website that they received funds, there is no other public information about the implemented projects of the mentioned organizations. Based on In the public tender, one of the criteria for distribution is transparency, the quality of the project, i.e. the program, as well as the capacity of the non-governmental organization, therefore, with this decision, the above-mentioned criteria were not met by the majority of organizations that received funds in the last Decision of the Ministry. We request that you inform the public which projects these are. the above-mentioned organizations, how and in what way they were implemented in the past period, but also to what extent these projects influenced the improvement of the RE community's position. By providing this information, you would remove any possible doubt that there was misuse of public resources and inappropriate spending of funds from the budget of Montenegro We note that 482 euros have been allocated from the same budget in the past three years for financing projects of non-governmental organizations," said Zenka from the NGO Mladi Romi - Herceg Novi.

They also state that they have sent a request for free access to information to the Ministry of Human and Minority Rights, through which they requested insight into the reports (narrative and financial) of the implemented projects for 2018 and 2019, because, as they claim, most of the information about the implemented projects is not publicly available. available.

"This request was rejected with the explanation that in this way it will provide information that is not in the interest of protecting personal data, which is against the law itself. In this regard, our NGO has sent a complaint to the Agency for the Protection of Personal Data and Free Access to Information, that in accordance with Article 14 of the Law on Free Access to Information ("Official Gazette of Montenegro", no. 44/12 and 30/17), which states that the authority is obliged to provide access to information by delivering a copy of it to the applicant, after deleting the part of the information to which access is restricted the decision to provide us with the requested information after the action of deleting the disputed information has been carried out, so that we can further carry out this analysis to the end and inform the public with information about how, to whom and in what way the funds from the budget were spent in the mentioned years for the mentioned activities. We would also like to inform you that the NGO Young Roma - Herceg Novi recently analyzed in detail the work of all NGOs in Montenegro, whose projects dealt with the issues of the RE population. The method of obtaining projects, the quality of implementation and the very justification of projects financed from the Budget of Montenegro is very questionable in the case of certain organizations", concludes the statement of the NGO Mladi Romi - Herceg Novi.