Last week Prime Minister Boyko Borisov said he gathered all the mayors of municipalities and reminded them there was a sum of 300 million lev for equipment that remain unutilised in the healthcare ministry and the ministry of regional development and municipal officials delay work on sending their projects. In fact, the speech of the Prime Minister reminded a joke. First of all, the sum is no 300 million, because half of that is for regional and university hospitals, while the other half is mostly for new oncology clinics and thus for the municipal multidisciplinary clinics what remains is less than 100 million. And money is not only equipment but also for reconstruction and renovation.
From what Borisov said one could get the impression that the millions are waiting on the table, but the mayors are the ones who do not want to take them. And this is not the reason, because quality projects are written by well qualified people. There are strict requirements for investments, for meeting financial criteria, financing and many other things for which
the state never prepared municipalities
even in a shortened course of instructions. From conversations between minister Atanasova and municipalities it turned out that the reasons that led to underutilisation of funds were that local authorities have been slow, and physicians from hospitals wanted changes in the set of specifications. The only logical explanation is that these parameters are obviously not written for the needs and capacity of hospitals.
In addition, the healthcare system and its municipal clinics suffer from diverse authorities engaged in the allocation of the money from EU operational programmes. Regional Ministry creates the infrastructure and purchases medical equipment, promotes social skills of medical workers, while the Ministry of Transport makes electronic systems for health prevention campaigns. The first wants one things, the other one has different requirements and it is quite logical many projects fail to qualify.
The list of clinics that will receive EU funding, comes from the Cabinet and it is created without competition. The paper prepared by the government
listed the names of big hospitals
in Blagoevgrad, Plovdiv, Stara Zagora, Haskovo, Shumen, Burgas, Vratsa, Rousse, Sofia, Svishtov, Lom, Karlovo, Balchik, Velingrad, Gotse Delchev, Kazanlak, Samokov, Sandanski. Subsidies between 3 million and 6.5 million lev will buy them high-tech equipment to repair neglected waiting rooms and operating rooms. However, these are mostly state and not municipal hospitals.
