Czech Republic: Former project manager says authorities did not monitor Romani NGO correctly

Miroslav Kroutil, the former Liberec Regional Authority official in charge of distributing money for a social work project in the region, says the regional leadership did not sufficiently monitor the activity of the Liberec Romani Association (Liberecké romské sdružení). In an interview with news server iDNES.cz, Kroutil said the regional leadership is also to blame for the association squandering its subsidy when it provided field social work services and ran drop-in centers throughout the region. News server Romea.cz has excerpted the interview below.

Q: You were in charge of this project, so I have to ask what you think of the Regional Authority’s behavior and of Regional Councilor Pavel Petráček, who was ultimately responsible for supervising it.

A: I think they have thrown the Liberec Romani Association overboard. All of the screw-ups that the ministerial audit raised have to be blamed on someone. The regional leadership bears a greater share of the blame for this than the Romani association itself does.

Q: What about you, as the project manager?

A: I was the manager from June 2009 – July 2010. Since then I have been suing the region to reverse their decision to fire me.

Q: You haven’t answered the question.

A: The reason given for my firing was that I had not ensured the monitoring of the organizations providing social services. That included the Romani association. The thing is, they fired me to make sure I couldn’t do that monitoring. I wanted someone to do it! I can document everything.

Q: Why didn’t you monitor it when you were manager?

A: It is directly written into the project that positions for two auditors must be established in order to perform that monitoring. I wanted the head of the department to set up those auditors’ positions. She refused to do it, and the regional councilors also refused. I went to see the director of the Regional Authority about it, and he promised to set them up, but he never did. In my regular monitoring report to the ministry in April 2010, I reported that part of the project as unfulfilled. The head of the department ordered me, in writing, to erase that part of the report. I did that, and I then warned Regional Governor Eichler that he would be signing a report that wasn’t true. Evidently that must not have bothered him. Two months later, they gave me my notice.

Q: Am I to understand that Liberec Region bureaucrats bear an equal share of responsibility with the Romani association for the fact that the association paid their people CZK 50 000 salaries, paid itself for the rental of its own car, paid high rents and all of these other sins?

A: I already told you the region bears the greater share of the blame. You know what the strangest thing is? They have canceled their contract with the Romani association and announced a public tender that includes the same sloppy work as the previous ones. Once again, it is possible to vacuum a lot of money out of the system. For example, almost CZK 5 million was allocated just for providing support to 100 anonymous people – alcoholics, drug addicts, homeless people. The law only requires that someone spend an hour with each of them. At these rates, that means each interview is costing CZK 50 000. Even if a field social worker spoke to everyone living under the bridge 10 times, that would still be CZK 5 000 per interview. The amounts of money on offer are still absurdly high!

Q: You are suing to get your job back. I have seen an e-mail from Regional Governor Stanislav Eichler where he writes that you just want revenge. Is that the case?

A: Revenge may be sweet, but I am doing my best to fight those emotions, which naturally is difficult in this case. I am not suing because of my lost wages, but so I can reveal the disorder there was and is in this project. This same project is running in every region of this country and there is absolutely no risk involved for those who want to divert this financing somewhere completely else than to the socially excluded people it is supposed to help. All you have to do is be more adroit than the Liberec Romani Association was.

The full interview (in Czech only) can be read here:

http://liberec.idnes.cz/vysoke-mzdy-pro-romske-sdruzeni-liberecky-kraj-nehlidal-tvrdi-manazer-1mq-/liberec-zpravy.aspx?c=A120208_1729666_liberec-zpravy_oks#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=liberec