At the tender for the selection of a new private partner in Belgrade's public transport, which the director of the Center for Local Self-Government Nikola Jovanović claims was rigged, the consortium around "Bg Bus Prevoz", whose buses should receive 84 lines, won. The contract for this work is worth 1,34 billion eurose New economy.
Jovanović explains that "there is nothing against public-private partnerships, but that they should be quality carriers like Arriva used to be".
"Many of those private companies were asked to pay a certain amount in order to enter the 'C&LC Consortium', which many actors in the city were informed about, and many good private carriers could not enter the consortium even though they were ready to make various compromises - precisely because these worst took the biggest part of the cake of 84 lines and almost 1,4 billion euros", said Jovanović for The new economy.
He added that when you look at the statistics of buses going out on the streets, there are fewer Chinese and Turkish buses that are new than Solaris that were bought more than ten years ago.
The winner of the tender is the owner of the haunted line 511
It is interesting that until now the chosen carriers were in charge of line 511, which runs from Belgrade on the water to Sremčica. This route is known for regular bus breakdowns, constant delays and doors that open by themselves.
The company C&LC group, which owns line 511, is also known for the fact that its owners are connected to Zvonko Veselinović.
"This carrier became famous for numerous other incidents, burning buses, and other situations where the lives of passengers on the bus were directly threatened," he said and called on the Prosecutor's Office to review this case.
The president of the Centar trade union, Ivan Banković, said at the conference that the mayor "forced private carriers to buy new buses."
He added that with the contract, except for new vehicles, the recipients have no obligation to further invest, Nova ekonomija writes.
"They have no obligation to invest in the quality of transportation, higher standards, so that their garages are not meadows with assembly sheds, so everything that GSP has, and GSP is obviously not good for this city government and Šapić, private transporters will not have that," Banković said. .
He reminded that drivers work from 12 to 15 hours a day for private carriers, as well as that the City of Belgrade and the Secretariat "do not feel any responsibility towards the citizens", that they have not controlled the carriers in the last year - nor sanctioned them.
The only participant in the tender
BIRN revealed that the consortium led by the companies "Bg Bus Prevoz" and C&LC Group, whose owners are related to Zvonko Veselinović, was the only bidder in the tender for the selection of a new private partner in Belgrade's public transport.
In this consortium, the largest number of buses is owned by the company C&LC Group, which currently operates on route 511, from Sremčica to "Belgrade on the water".
Until now, C&LC had 31 buses on the streets of Belgrade, and if the City makes a deal with the new consortium, the C&LC Group company will become a private carrier with almost the most buses on the streets of the Serbian capital – 70 vehicles.
The original deadline for applications was August 26, but at the request of private carriers, it was extended until September 5.
The decision on the selection of a new private partner is made by the Secretariat for Public Transport, and the contract should be signed by the City and the private partner after the Assembly of the City of Belgrade approves the final draft of the contract.
The basic condition for participating in the new tender was that the competing carrier has 497 buses, of which around 200 are brand new.
Another 84 lines go into private ownership
"Vreme" previously wrote that Belgrade plans to entrust 84 lines of public city passenger transport to a private company. Most of the lines were previously maintained by private companies, while 33 lines are currently operated by the Belgrade City Transport Company (GSP). After these lines are also handed over to the private sector, GSP will have only about 30 bus lines left in the entire city, that is, one quarter of the existing routes.
The city of Belgrade recently conducted a procedure in which it entrusted 34 city transport lines in Belgrade to a private company - 27 of which were GSP lines.
The project includes, among other things, lines on the territory of the municipalities of Grocka and Zvezdara, section 300, Voždovac, section 400 and Čukarica and Rakovica, section 500 and part of the lines with the majority of the route in those municipalities, including the city municipality of Savski venac.
According to the new project, which was approved by the Provisional Authority on June 20, the contract between the City and the future private partner would be concluded for ten years, while the projected value of the project was about 146,4 billion dinars without VAT, i.e. 1,25 billion euros .
Source: New economy
