Tender delays impacting daily life
Confusion and lack of organization taking toll on public transport and street lighting
Tenders with gray areas, problematic procedures that lead to delays, contracts that run up against the Court of Auditors, bodies that do not plan their needs in time, even when they have been known for years, are taking a toll on the daily life of citizens.
Typical examples are the lack of air conditioning on the ISAP train and the Athens metro, as the upgrade procedures have not been implemented. What’s more, the damage to street lighting and traffic lights is not being repaired immediately because no tender was launched in time by the Regional Authority of Attica.
Meanwhile, the country’s first heatwave has begun to test the endurance of public transport.
The problems have been known for years, but are unsolved. Poor planning for train upgrade projects, a process that includes the air-conditioning system, is a major cause of passenger inconvenience.
A typical example is the the project to upgrade 14 ISAP trains that entered service between 1983 and 1985. On Friday, the Court of Auditors is expected to hear an appeal filed by STASY, the company which operates ISAP, the metro and tram, against a previous rejection of a previous Supreme Court decision.
The latter, as revealed by Kathimerini, had blocked the signing of the amended contract between STASY and the Spanish company CAF, the contractor in charge of the project in question.
The original contract worth €65.5 million (excluding VAT) had been signed in December 2022 and under it the fixed transport network expected the first rebuilt train to be delivered in July 2024.
However, in December 2023, STASY’s Board of Directors accepted the contractor’s request to adjust the total contract price by 9.5% – i.e. by €6.2 million plus VAT – and to extend the project’s partial delivery times. Based on the new schedules, the delivery of the first upgraded train was set for February 2025 and the delivery of the standard wagon in July 2024 – i.e. in one month.
Seven out of 10 public contracts in Greece are awarded directly via a negotiated procedure without prior publication.
Their values ranging from 20% to 25% of the total value of public contracts of all categories signed each year with the public sector.
