Bucharest mayor Nicușor Dan presented in a press conference on Tuesday a balance sheet of the first ten months of his mandate at the head of the Capital City Hall. He said that 14 of the 16 municipal companies set up by the former administration had been shut down, and 2,700 employees will be laid off.
The mayor general of the Capital city reminded about the “exaggerated expenses that these municipal companies have produced in the city budget.”
“It is a damage of hundreds of millions of euros. I just remind you that following a control of the Ministry of Finance, I notified the national anti-corruption body, DNA, over serious damages and abuses from the Cemeteries Company, where public procurement procedures were circumvented, where many goods were bought with overestimated prices”.
According to the mayor, the municipal companies caused a damage of hundreds of millions of euros, while the salary expenses mounted to 150 million lei on an annual basis.
Out of the 16 municipal companies set up by the former administration, only the park and civil protection companies are to be closed, said Bucharest mayor, adding that they will be dismantled “soon”.
Nicușor Dan announced that there are 4 other companies that will be temporarily maintained “because they provide some services that will be transferred at some point to the municipality”. It is about the companies of public lighting, the maintenance of the traffic lights, the disinfection, disinsection, rodent control activity and the real estate company that manages the social building in Ghencea.
The remaining municipal companies are STB, the Metropolitan Buildings Trust, Energetica Servicii and Termoenergetica.
According to the mayor, many of these companies have important equipment purchased with public money and they are meant to return under public property. The mayor underlined that the closure of the municipal companies was not “a simple administrative operation, but there were serious technical difficulties”.
Nicușor Dan said that when he took over the leadership of the Capital City Hall, it was “literally bankrupt”. He added that there have been several dangers that have been overcome in the past months, at the cost of “hundreds of hours of work”, including the risk of Euro 2020 not being organized.
Nicusor Dan specified that, at the moment he took over his mandate, the Capital City Hall had in account three million lei and debts of three billion lei. “The mayor’s office was in a bankruptcy that it had not declared,” he said.
According to the mayor, at this moment the Bucharest City Hall has a stable financial situation, no accounts blocked, the investments have been unblocked and the institution is credible on the market.
The sums in the goods and services department have been diminished by over RON 200 million in the past seven months of 2021, as against the same period last year.