A trusted company was chosen as a provider for students in Chornomorsk without an auction

The Department of Education of the Chornomorsk City Council of Odesa Oblast has conducted a procurement to select a company that will provide catering services to students in the city's general secondary education institutions.

This is stated in the electronic procurement system Prozorro, according to the Center for Public Investigations.

The winning company will have to provide meals in Chornomorsk schools until December 31, 2024:

• students in grades 1-4;
• students of grades 5-11 - orphans, children from low-income families, children under guardianship;
• students of grades 1-11 in summer health camps of general secondary education institutions.

The procurement was conducted in the format of open bidding with special features, and the private enterprise Fregat-2002 had no competitors. Therefore, the company is currently the only bidder for UAH 4 million 79.9 thousand.

Open bidding with special conditions means that almost all terms are shorter than those of open bidding under the Law on Public Procurement. This means that this procurement is much faster than open tenders.

The period for submitting proposals is seven calendar days, and the period for challenging qualifications is five calendar days. Often, there is no auction during such tenders, so the participant has no competitors.

However, after the start of the full-scale invasion, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine temporarily changed the rules of bidding for the period of martial law in Ukraine and within 90 days from the date of its termination or cancellation. Thus, the government temporarily canceled electronic auctions. Since then, tenders announced in Prozorro can be held without an auction.

According to the YouControl service, the private enterprise Fregat-2002 was registered in 2002 in Chornomorsk. The owner is Oleksandr Popov.

In January 2023, specialists of the Southern Office of the State Audit Service, based on the results of an audit of certain issues of financial and economic activities of the Education Department of the Chornomorsk City Council of Odesa District, Odesa Region, for the period from January 1, 2019 to September 30, 2022, found financial violations that led to losses totaling almost UAH 5.9 million and other violations totaling UAH 4.2 million.

According to the auditors, most of the violations relate to the unreasonably high cost of catering services.

Thus, following the results of open bidding procedures held in 2019-2020, the Education Department and the private enterprise Fregat-2002 entered into two agreements on the provision of school catering services to students of secondary schools subordinated to the Education Department of the Chornomorsk City Council.

Кирило Бойко