“Of the total 11.2 million tonnes of waste produced in Serbia last year, as much as 80 percent is industrial waste, and only 10 percent of the total waste is treated properly. The great thing is that EPS used only 73 tons of waste”, said DRI Director Dusko Pejovic presenting the report.
State Auditor Goran Čabarkapa said EPS had a contract in place to donate 3,630 tonnes of waste, the so-called fly ash for the construction of the embankment, and that it did not come to its realization completely even though the material met all the requirements.
“Only 73 tonnes were used, while the Ministry of Construction told us that sand was chosen instead of that material”, Chabarkapa said. This is one example where waste was not used as it should. In Slovenia, for example, almost 95 percent of waste is treated, while in Serbia 80 percent of waste remains at the producer site. Visiting the two largest EPS landfills in Obrenovac and Kostolac, the SAI also realized that EPS did not act on the main project of rehabilitation and closure of the ash and slag landfill “Middle Kostolac Island”.
“The landfill was not closed until July 2015, as foreseen by the main project. The consequence is that two cassettes are active at the same time, so that ash is released into the surrounding settlements and pollutants are emitted from the ash dump, which poses a risk to human health”, Chabarkapa said at a presentation of an audit report at the Media Center of the UNS.
He also warned that insufficient effective supervision and control over waste management has been established in Serbia, which is why budget revenues in the period 2014-2018 are by 6.7 billion dinars lower than just used car imports.
“Importers of used cars are required to pay a fee of some 12,000 dinars per tonne of vehicles. The audit found that 1,898 companies did not submit reports to the Environmental Protection Agency by 363,798 tons, which damaged the budget by 4.4 billion dinars, and that 1,441 entities submitted incorrect data on almost 192,000 tons, which is 2.3 billion dinars”, Chabarkapa pointed out.
In addition, the SAI presented two more reports to flood prevention in Serbia, as well as material support as a measure of poverty reduction. In this second report, the SAI reminded that in Serbia 26 billion dinars are allocated annually for social security benefits, and that half of the 268,000 beneficiaries of this benefit are able to work.
“The existing system of social protection does not lead to the achievement of goals, and due to insufficient cooperation of the competent authorities, the opportunity for working age beneficiaries of financial assistance to leave the social protection system is missed”, said senior advisor at SAI Svetlana Milanovic Vrcelj. She recalled the latest strategy from 2005 and the need for a new one, and highlighted some of the other problems encountered during the audit.
“One of the conclusions is that the number of employees is not based on the real needs of the centers for social work, so we have at the Center in Nis that one employee goes to 2,000 users, in Sombor one to 790 users”, said Vrcelj Milanovic, adding that the Ministry of Labor only partially monitors the spending of 14 billion dinars annually allocated for social financial assistance. Thus, in the period from 2016 to 2018, the Ministry of Labor, as the audit showed, supervised the work of only 4 out of 140 social assistance centers in Serbia, or only three percent, and that out of the 114 cases examined, 92 percent were annulled or returned for reconsideration.
