It is certain that the "(anti)fairy tale of a student dormitory in Niš" will enter its 16th year, although some public officials, such as the current president of the National Assembly Ana Brnabić and the director of the Student Center Radeta Rajković, promised and announced this construction much earlier. Of the many, the most recent is Rajković's promise that the home will be habitable by July of this year, while the real situation is such that it is still not known who will be the contractor. How did it come about?
The construction and work on the Eiffel Tower lasted a total of two years and a few months more, while it took nine years to build the Statue of Liberty. There are many other similar examples, but one building in Nis has been built longer than the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower combined. For 15 years, a student dormitory has been "built" near the technical faculties on Nikola Tesla Boulevard. The "cornerstone" was laid back in 2009, and in the meantime, one ministry collapsed, the government changed, the ministers and those responsible for this project were replaced, and the started house is literally gathering dust while tenders are called and fail.
And that's how the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development finally decided to finish the started work on the student dormitory, that is, to build lamella number 5, and they announced a public procurement in March of this year, and the deadline for interested companies to come forward was until the 19th. April (it was later extended until April 23). The deadline was then extended several times, some companies submitted requests for the protection of rights, and as of the time of writing this text (November 25), the company that will complete the construction of the student dormitory has still not been found, nor is it known when it will happen. (Otherwise, the Request for the protection of rights is a procedure for the legal protection of companies that compete in a specific tender due to possible irregularities and violations of the Law on Public Procurement by the contracting authority, in this case the Ministry of Education).
MORE THAN 200 QUESTIONS FROM ONE COMPANY
Although the relevant Ministry has announced a public procurement for the completion of works on the student dormitory, and on this occasion, the Student Center said that the dormitory will be habitable for the next 2024/2025. academic year, the search for a contractor was still extended until July 25 of this year, because the tender was suspended in the meantime. Namely, considering that three companies, which applied for this job, submitted requests for the protection of rights to the Republican Commission for the Protection of Rights in Public Procurement Procedures, and all three requests were partially approved in June, the Commission made a decision to suspend the tender. For this reason, the deadline for applying for the tender was moved to July 25, even though the deadline for submitting applications was April 19.
One of the three companies that submitted the request ("WD Concord West") stated in the explanation that they sent requests for additional information regarding the tender in order to prepare the offer on time, and that the contracting authority, i.e. the Ministry of Education, did not provide them with all the answers which they needed.
In the decision of the Republic Commission on the adoption of their request for the protection of rights, it was stated that in the period from April 8 to 16, this company repeatedly requested additional clarifications and information necessary for the preparation of the offer from the client, and that the Ministry only partially and selectively responded to them to questions, while some questions were not answered at all. Thus, according to the statements in this decision, the Ministry of Education as the contracting authority violated Article 97 of the Law on Public Procurement. This company also complained that the tender documentation was unclear, which is why they sent questions to the Ministry in a timely manner, but did not receive all the answers in return.
"It can be clearly and unequivocally determined that the contracting authority does not act in accordance with the provisions of the Law on Public Procurement, but answers the questions that he personally wants and those that only he wants to answer, and does not give any clarifications to most of them or answers what is not asked", they stated from the company "WD Concord West", which was reported by "Južne vesti".
The Ministry of Education reacted by saying that they did not answer all the questions that this company asked them because they received more than 200 questions and requests for clarification of the tender documents. They stated that the answers are published in both Serbian and English, which put an additional burden on the work of the Commission for Public Procurement, which is why they were unable to answer all the questions.
The question arises - was it necessary to treat or primarily prevent the ambiguity and confusion of the three companies regarding the tender? Then, why didn't they use all this time to compile a little more clear competition documentation if their "system is burdened" by so many questions from only one of the companies?
And between the adoption of the request for the protection of rights and the new deadline, the company "WD Concord West" apparently wanted to continue applying for the tender, so the last questions it sent to the Ministry were sent on July 17, according to the portal of public of procurement, when they requested changes to tender documents.
Later, in September, the Republican Commission rejected their repeated request for the protection of rights, as well as the request for compensation for the costs of the rights protection procedure.
EIGHT MONTHS LATER: CONTRACTOR UNKNOWN
As the months passed, in the end, the deadline for submitting bids was extended until October 8, so until the day of writing this text, the status of the procedure was marked as active, even though a month and a half had passed since the deadline for companies to apply. However, on November 25, the Ministry of Education suspended this tender, which, let's remind you once again, was announced back in March of this year. The reason is that the bidder (actually one group of bidders consisting of several companies) does not meet the necessary criteria for getting the job for the completion of the construction of the student dormitory in Niš.
It is not known whether the tender will be extended again until a certain deadline or if it has been completely suspended, but it is clear that the contractor who will complete the construction of the student dormitory has not yet been found, even though the Ministry of Education had about eight months to do so.
"Vreme" tried to get answers from the Ministry of Education about how the procedure regarding the protection of bidders' rights was followed, including the deadlines for submitting bids and timely communication with them, as well as what the status of the tender is at the moment, but the answers are pending the publication of this text. we didn't get it. Getting an answer is also made difficult, that is, impossible because the public procurement portal has a contact person who is not responsible for this tender at all, as "Vremen" was told, and her colleagues have not updated this information. Our questions were redirected to the authorities in the Ministry, but we still did not receive any answers.
CHRONOLOGY OF DELAYED CONSTRUCTION
"Vreme" previously wrote about the entire process of finding companies that would perform work on the completion of the student dormitory. The first phase of the works was carried out by the company "Tončev gradnja". Then, in 2012, the Ministry of Education signed a contract with the company "Put inženjering", which won the job in a tender and was supposed to finish the construction of this home by August 2012. However, that deadline was not respected because, as the aforementioned company said , the Ministry did not pay the required advance. With that, they claimed, this company lost more than a million dinars because "they unnecessarily kept the construction operative on standby". Two years later, in August 2014, all work on the student dormitory was suspended because this company sued the Ministry of Education, even though the first students were supposed to move into the new dormitory in 2015. For three years, between 2014 and 2017, the issue of construction just "floated in the air".
Nothing happened, and Rajković repeated his announcement two years later, when a new public procurement was finally announced at the beginning of 2019. Then, in addition to "Linija" from Valjevo, the company "Bauvezen" from Lazarevac was chosen as the contractor, otherwise known for the accusations of being involved in a series of economic affairs and whose former responsible person, as "Danas" wrote, Nemanja Trifunović was among those arrested. who are suspected of having damaged the Electric Power Company of Serbia for 7,5 million dollars, during the performance of works on the Thermal Power Plant "Kostolac B".
The Minister of Education at the time, Mladen Šarčević, said that he was not satisfied with the progress of the works, and in 2021, Rade Rajković made a new promise: the home will be finished by the following year, 2022, given that the works this time were "stopped" by covid. In August 2022, he gives a new deadline for the completion of the works, which should have been July 2024. In April, Rajković told "Vreme" that there was no chance that everything would be finished by July because the procurement was only announced in March. And he was not wrong at least in that forecast, if he was in all past forecasts. But, until July, we could get the name of the company as a confirmation that "something is being done" regarding the student dormitory, but we don't even have that name. Now we have neither old nor new dates.
As Rade Rajković often predicted when the building would be completed or when it would become habitable for students, "Vreme" accordingly asked him what he thought would happen next, on the day the Ministry suspended the tender. Rajković said that it is not the right address for that, but he added that the construction of this home is a state priority. Evil tongues could ask - what would happen if it wasn't a state priority?!
"Construction will start very soon, in the next few months. It's going to the end," underlined Rade Rajković for "Vreme". Considering that this home has been waiting for 15 years, "a few months" compared to that is not a long period of "vacuum" like we had between 2014 and 2017. The only question that remains is how long those "few months" will last.
The fact that the construction of a student dormitory on Nikola Tesla Boulevard is necessary is also shown by the data indicated by the student of the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš and the coordinator for social networks from the National Coalition for Decentralization, Marija Ilić. She described for "Vreme" how, from her point of view, life looks like in the student dormitory where she has lived since the first year of studies. She points out that she is satisfied, and that the main advantage of living in a home is the affordable price of accommodation, while the quality of the accommodation itself, the equipment of the home, heating and other details have both good and bad sides. She took as an example a big problem with the internet connection, specifically in the pavilion at the Faculty of Medicine. As the Internet is a necessary tool for studying today, it is a big problem for the students of this pavilion, which was confirmed for "Vreme" by two other female students who wished to remain anonymous. Asked about it, Rade Rajković announced that by December 15, the students of that pavilion will get a new network, so there will be internet.
When we talk about the accommodation capacity in Nis, which is an important driver of the issue of building a new home, they are much smaller compared to Belgrade, as Marija Ilić says. "According to the data of the Republic Institute of Statistics, the University of Niš has approximately 25 students, while the University of Belgrade has approximately 90 students. Belgrade has almost four times more students than Niš, but ten times more places in student dormitories," says Marija Ilić for "Vreme" and adds that, for example, the Student Center in Belgrade has about 10.500 places in total, as highlighted on their website. , while the Student Center in Nis has 958 seats. He says that the statistics in this case are also on the side of Novi Sad, which has about 3.000 places in dormitories with approximately 40.000 students, while Kragujevac has about 15.000 places in dormitories for 900 students.
Marija Ilić also points out another problem with student dormitories in Niš, which is the inability of students who "officially" live in the city to apply for accommodation in a dorm. He explains that according to this logic, a student who lives in the municipality of Doljevac, which is about 18 kilometers from Niš, has the right to apply for accommodation, but a student who lives in, for example, the village of Ostrovica, which officially belongs to the city of Niš, but is about 24 kilometers, he does not actually have the right to apply for accommodation.
Considering that on the website of the Nis Student Center it is pointed out that students who are financed from the budget are accommodated in the dormitory, so self-financing students can count on a dormitory in Nis only if there are places left, it is clear that due to the lack of accommodation capacity there are not enough places not even for all students who are on a budget, which is why the question of building a new student dormitory at the technical faculties in Niš is of great importance to students.
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