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By:
Noble Minci
- July 7, 2021 22:06
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The National Audit Office has found that the leasing of municipal properties in the Municipality of Dragash has continued to be accompanied by irregularities, along with cases of avoiding open procurement procedures for contracts with minimal value, as well as misclassification of expenses. The data related to these issues are disclosed in the Audit Report for the annual financial statements of this municipality for the year 2020.
"In the registry of the Municipality of Dragash, there are 109 properties/land that are in use, the land belongs to the Municipality, while the facilities were built by the users. Of these, 26 properties have contracts before 2006 and 77 other properties are used with expired contracts, from 2002 to 2017. Despite the letters, periodic notices and the agreement of the users to pay the debt, the Municipality has not renewed the contracts. or there are no contracts through the procedures. Despite the recommendation from last year, this situation is still continuing with such contracts as a result of the municipality not taking measures", says the report of the ZKA. It is emphasized there that the use of public properties without valid contracts between the Municipality and the users of the municipal property can cause the Municipality significant financial losses, and that it also loses the opportunity to ensure that the public property available to the Municipality is properly managed.
"The Mayor of the Municipality should increase controls regarding the use of municipal property by evaluating all contracts. At the same time, ensure that these properties are put into use according to the requirements of the law on the use and exchange of real property of the Municipality", the Auditor recommended.
ZKA has also encountered avoidance of open procurement procedures, in contracts with minimal value.
"From the report of signed contracts for 2020, the Municipality, similar to last year, had signed 71 contracts through the procedure with a minimum value of 62,508 euros. During the audit, we noticed that there were contracts for supplies and services of the same nature, bypassing the open tendering procedures. The reasons for the implementation of separate procurement procedures is the lack of communication between the requesting and procurement units during the preparation of the procurement plan," the report reads.
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Another issue singled out by the ZKA has to do with the inadequate classification of expenses by the Municipality of Dragash. "During the testing of expenses, we noticed that in a payment from the category of goods and services in the amount of 9,458 euros, we noticed that the nature of the expense belonged to the category of capital investments. This payment was made for the renovation and repair of the school yard in Llopushnik. The cause of these misclassifications was the lack of budget in the relevant categories", the Auditor announced.
Meanwhile, in the case of goods and services, the ZKA has recorded the acceptance of the goods in violation of the contract, specifically in the contract for the supply of wood, in which case it has recommended the management to ensure that the acceptance of the goods, namely wood, is done according to the conditions of contract and that no payment be made unless the acceptances are signed by three members of the commission. The auditor has also found a case of entering into obligations without pledging funds.
"During the testing of three payments for the supply of wood, we noticed that the Municipality, namely the schools, had received or supplied wood worth 34,000 euros, but had promised and paid only the value of 15,000 euros. The difference of 19,000 euros shows that the Municipality was in debt to the Economic Operator. Also, for these supplies, there was no invoice that the Municipality reported as an obligation to the Economic Operator. This had happened as a result of the poor management of the contract for wood supplies", the Auditor announced, who also found deficiencies in the recording of assets as well as inefficient management of accounts receivable, which in 2020 reached the value over 2 million euros.
"The municipality does not have a plan for collecting accounts receivable from its debtors. As a result, receivables are constantly increasing, causing difficulties in their collection. In 2020, we have an increase of 101,273 euros or 5% compared to the previous year (1,927,946 euros). In this increase, the biggest impact was from the property tax. For property tax receivables, after the Municipality had distributed the invoices, the debtors with debts over 300 euros were selected and the letters with receipts were sent, most of them were not in Kosovo and as such remained unpaid", it is stated in report.
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Regarding the implementation of the recommendations of the ZKA, the report states that the report for the previous year resulted in 15 recommendations, of which 5 have never been implemented, 9 have been implemented and 1 is no longer applied.
On the other hand, according to the report, the Mayor of the Municipality, Shaban Shabani, has taken into consideration and agreed with the findings and recommendations of the Auditor, as well as pledged that within 30 days he will submit the action plan for the implementation of the recommendations.
