With the contracted procurement of around 80 thousand LAMP tests and 50 thousand serological tests for the coronavirus in 2021, which were not used, Montenegro threw away six fully equipped PCR laboratories.
This was announced at the conference "Unions as a corrective factor of society", which was organized by the Union of Doctors of Medicine of Montenegro, the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of the EU (CESI) and MANS.
The President of the Union of Doctors of Medicine of Montenegro, Milena Popović Samardžić, said that the largest number of public procurement procedures, which Montefarm carried out during the last year, refers to the negotiation procedure without prior publication of the call for tenders.
"What we noticed during the analysis of the Public Procurement Plan of Montefarma during the last year is that it was changed 11 times. This is where the light goes on that there is a problem in the public procurement system, as soon as you need to change the Public Procurement Plan almost every month," said Popović Samardžić.
She indicated, as reported by the PR Center, that Montefarm conducted 57 procedures, 38 of which were negotiation procedures without prior publication of invitations to tender.
"When we recalculate, we see that 66 percent of the public procurements in healthcare carried out by Montefarm refer to the negotiation procedure, while at the state level only 2,2 percent of the total number of procurements were carried out through the negotiation procedure due to urgency," said Popović Samardžić.
She said that in accordance with the Law on Free Access to Information, MANS approached the Ministry of Health on January 21 of this year and requested contracts for the procurement of medical material for sampling and testing for Kovid-19, which were concluded during 2020 and 2021.
"No response within the legal deadline, so on February 9, MANS sent a complaint to the Agency for Free Access to Information due to the administration's silence and sent an urgent request to the Ministry of Health with a repeated request. As the answer did not arrive even in March, MANS filed a complaint with the Administrative Court. Until today, the institutions have not submitted the requested data," stated Popović Samardžić.
She said that on this day last year, the Ministry of Health concluded and signed two contracts with its daughter company Sinofarm on the purchase of 80.064 LAMP tests for the detection of the new coronavirus, the value of which is 724.579 euros, which are not intended for mass testing due to the long time required to read the results.
"Also, 50 serological tests for the new coronavirus worth 535 euros were purchased. The total value of this purchase is 1 euros. When we looked for public procurement for LAMP tests, we did not find it in the public procurement system. When these tests arrived in Montenegro, the shelf life was only four months, and expired in mid-December 259. By that time, all 579 tests had failed and were stored at Montefarma. Those tests were not used and this money was wasted, and we will see how much it will cost to destroy this, already, medical waste", stated Popović Samardžić.
Speaking about the serological tests, she clarified that their shelf life was longer, more precisely until June 17, 2022.
"And here we are talking about tests that are done manually, which is why they remained unused. They spent all this time in Montefarma and in nine days they will be thrown," said Popović Samardžić.
She explained that the two technicians available at the Public Health Institute during business hours, if they only did these serological tests every working day of the year, would be able to use 6 tests in a year because of the time it takes to process that one test.
"With such contracted purchases, Montenegro wasted money that could have bought six PCR laboratories. Six hospitals could be equipped with complete PCR laboratories, because one laboratory with all the necessary equipment costs a little less than 200 thousand euros. The amount we wasted is six fully equipped PCR laboratories," said Popović Samardžić.
The Vice-President of the Assembly, Branka Bošnjak, said that she was proud that they managed to get the Law on Salaries of Employees in the Public Sector to be adopted by the Assembly of Montenegro, which should start being implemented on July 1.
"It's not about the salary, it's about the status. I think that every country that values itself and that thinks about progress and development should value knowledge and should value the professions, and this is the way to look at the participation of the middle class, which is the most important for the stability and progress of society, and I mean the medical profession and education. Somehow, in recent years, we have degraded these professions," Bošnjak said.
He believes that if there is a crisis due to the application of the Law on Salaries of Employees in the Public Sector, everyone should have their coefficients reduced, "but by no means should doctors not be part of this Law and university professors".
"It is important that they have status, and we can all bear the burden of the crisis. We have to take care that there is no shortage of medical personnel, that as many of them as possible return to public health, and I hope that this law will contribute to that," Bošnjak said.
The General Secretary of CESI, Klaus Heeger, said that the strength of trade unions is of great importance, stating that any resilient system must include workers.
"Workers should be heard and must be part of that process. We believe and have proof that, in public service and health systems, in which social dialogue functions correctly, their service becomes better. In the case when social dialogue works, satisfaction at the workplace, motivation, commitment, engagement will increase, which will mean less "brain drain". "All together, it will bring better public service and the whole system will be better," said Heeger.
He assessed that more investments in health and public services, better working conditions, and wages are needed.
"Good working conditions and good pay reflect only one thing, which is respect and appreciation of the workforce. Every society should respect that," Heeger pointed out.
State Secretary of the Ministry of Health Elvis Omeragić said that in order to improve cooperation, it is necessary to know what has not worked so far.
"I believe that there will be fewer formal meetings, that we will detect the places that were creaking or that were not started together, and that we will work to ensure that there are no "bottlenecks". "The Ministry of Health is only a part of the system and it does not exist if there is not a quality Assembly and a quality legislature as something that not only controls, but also creates the conditions for all of this to function," Omeragić said.
According to him, the Ministry of Health will focus on primary health care getting the importance it should have, "to try to return the health system to health institutions".
"The main goal is for the patient to be the focus, for the quality of health care to be as high as possible, and to provide the patients with everything they deserve, is for the health staff to be at the level that a country that aspires to be part of the EU deserves," Omeragić said. .
The President of the Parliamentary Committee on Health, Srđan Pavićević, believes that the stereotype of thinking about union association has been overcome, explaining that he has evaluated that concept.
"Today, we can no longer consider the trade union as a paradigm of worker association. We are all protagonists of some work and therefore we are workers. We are all in a field of work that is our personal identification. "Thus, that stereotype that was overcome reached the level of a refined profiling that resulted in the Union of Medical Doctors," Pavićević said.
He also appealed to young people to speak with more courage and loudly about problems and anomalies in society and to initiate the changes we are striving for.
The president of the Union of Doctors and Pharmacists of Serbia, Rade Panić, assessed that the working conditions in the Balkan countries are bad, stating that this leads to thinking that healthcare workers build their careers outside the borders of their countries.
He pointed out that the data available to that trade union organization are not precise, and indicate that there is a large outflow of health workers abroad.
"On several occasions, we have asked the Medical Chamber for information on issued certificates of good health. The data varies a lot. For example, for 2016, we received information that 956 were issued, after that 854. The director of the chamber is hiding the data from us. It is a fact that in Serbia we currently have competitions for the employment of healthcare workers, to which no one applies," said Panić.
He said that they found out that there is an agreement between the National Employment Service of Germany and the Employment Bureau from Kragujevac, which is called the Agreement on Mediation and Temporary Employment of Workers of the Republic of Serbia in the Federal Republic of Germany.
"The contract states that those who deal with health care will be employed. Someone managed to deceive the public and the system, because it is not about health care. Technicians, anesthetists, radiology technicians, those who are our most trained, are leaving. It is an incalculable loss for our system that cannot be expressed only in money," said Panić.
He said that official data shows that under that Agreement, about 730 nurses left in seven years, stating that he responsibly claims that the number is much higher.
The chairwoman of the CESI health commission, Ester Reyes Dies, believes that politicians must find a solution to improve the working conditions of healthcare workers.
After the presentation, the research "Impact of digitalization on the public sector with a special focus on healthcare" was presented, the DiWork project, concludes the PR Center.
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