Mayor Maria Aida Episcopo comments on the approval in the City Council of the agenda item of the adhesion of the Municipality of Foggia to the Single Contracting Station of the provincial administration, approved with 22 votes of the majority in favor, eight abstentions and one against (Nunzio Angiola) from the opposition benches.
“Joining the Single Contracting Station, together with the outsourcing of the competitions to be announced to make up for the serious deficiencies in the organizational structure and the signing of the Public Notice Charter, represented an essential commitment undertaken in front of the citizens and public opinion during the election campaign, strongly indicative of our will to pursue the direction in the name of legality, transparency and normality after the dramatic dissolution of the previous administration” said the mayor, who highlighted how the current staffing of the institution, from a numerical and not qualitative point of view, “it does not in fact offer the necessary guarantees in such a delicate area as public procurement, and the choice to resort to a local structure such as that of the Provincial Administration is a further guarantee for the community of even greater attention with respect to any possible attempt to influence tenders and allow personal interests to prevail over collective ones”
The Bishop has however underlined that it is not a ‘marriage sine die’. In fact, he explains, “an automatic withdrawal is foreseen at any time without any additional cost, and our supervision on the observance of times and methods will be constant and careful, with the hope that the internal situation of the Municipality can soon change and allow the return to full autonomy in the public procurement sector”.
For the mayor, an important and expected step has been taken: “We will continue with a precise regulation also of the contracts for works and services pertaining to the institution even if under the threshold foreseen up to 500 thousand euros for works and 221 thousand euros for services. Next Thursday 4 July I will be in Rome at the Anac with the secretary general Mignozzi as Head of Prevention, Transparency and anti-corruption, to sign an agreement aimed at strengthening the procedures against corruption in the public administration”.
“There is no going back, Foggia does not deserve it and would not tolerate it. And I trust in the collaboration of the opposition forces in the City Council – who abstained or walked out of the chamber today – because we cannot be divided on this issue. I thank all the progressive forces for the coherence and unity shown in the chamber”.
For the Brothers of Italy council group, today’s approval would be an act of propaganda nature. “A tool that we share in the method but not in the merit” it is written in the press release. “First of all, no transparency or guarantee of impermeability since the tender commissions will be composed of either a trio of commissioners, two of which will be from the Municipality of Foggia, or even a commission composed of a single member (in the cases of procedures with the criterion of the lowest price) who “alone” can decide the fate of the contract! We delegate to others but we always decide. In the face of transparency! Commissioners who will have to be paid with money from the citizens of Foggia based on a percentage of the amount of the contract itself”.
The Melonians in the City Council insist: “Furthermore, according to the resolution, the Administration reserves the right to carry out the procedures whenever it deems fit. For the series… I’ll see about this contract, I like this other one less and you see about it. Not to mention the delays noted at the SUA of the Province given that many neighboring municipalities have abandoned the same Single Station due to cumbersome bureaucracy with the result of blocking public resources. Resources that in the case of the Municipality of Foggia in particular the funds of the Pnrr are already managed with extreme delay due to political and not administrative incapacity otherwise the funds for the projects presented would not have been obtained. We have given collaboration by proposing to contact through an investigative inquiry a third party registered in the “by right” lists such as Consip, Invitalia, the Public Works Department or the Prefectures and not a politically led one such as the Province where, coincidentally, the center-left governs”.
For the FdI, the group leader Claudio Amorese adds: “We proposed to also outsource the assignment of the so-called below-threshold tenders where corruption often lurks through direct assignments. We proposed to outsource all the members of the tender commissions. All our proposals were rejected”.
