The Eco Fund has announced a public tender for the allocation of 134 euros in grants for the purchase of electric and hybrid vehicles for the public sector. For electric cars, seven and a half thousand euros, and for hybrids, four thousand per vehicle.
Although the goal is good - encouraging the purchase of an environmentally friendly form of transport in the public sector, within the framework of implementing measures to improve air quality, the old story of an otherwise excessive number of official cars and their abuses is opening up...
"We have a very bad practice, that we have examples of misuse of official vehicles, using them for primary purposes, and we also have the case that many officials use official vehicles 24 hours a day. We have seen and continue to see official vehicles at weddings, on beaches, in the mountains, we have also had striking cases where official vehicles were used to transport construction materials for personal purposes," says Amina Murić from the Civic Alliance.
Official cars were also a hot topic at the end of October, when the Ministry of Finance blocked the planned purchase of as many as 500 new vehicles.
"There are four thousand vehicles in the public sector fleet, during the preparations for the next year's budget, requests for the purchase of 500 more arrived, this will not be possible even with this, I hope, with the next government, we raise our hands and make an analysis that what has is carefully redistributed," said then-minister Aleksandar Damjanović on October 20, 2023.
What became of all that is not known. Part of those 500 vehicles are for the needs of the police, inspections and those who work in the field, and the administration should have received new cars.
Then the Ministry of Finance proposed the formation of an Interdepartmental Working Group, which was supposed to find the best model for managing the fleet of state institutions and report to the Government on the steps to be taken...
The finance department has now referred TV News to the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and State Property, which has recently been responsible for official cars. They did not answer TV Vijesta's questions about how many cars the state institutions planned to buy this year, how they will reduce further purchases and prevent misuse.
The NGO sector is demanding concrete action from the Government...
"To rationalize the number of official vehicles, to work on reviewing the regulations in this area, to carry out monitoring, as well as to introduce adequate sanctions. Official vehicles are not really needed for certain functions, so that these funds can certainly be used for some pressing problems," he says. Amina Murić.
And there are plenty of pressing problems. Instead of saving money from the budget that is used for buying a car, registration, fuel, service and tires, they perceive them as their property and as something they must have. We were convinced of this many times when we looked at CG tables on weekends, in the Delta and on the beach... Old, bad practices are difficult to change.
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