The old affair is knocking on the door again

From March 22 this year, BiH citizens could face a serious problem of impossibility of issuing passports. Namely, then a one-year contract with Muhlbauer company ...

Senad Hasanagić is a happy man today. Perhaps at the last moment, he managed to take out passports for his children. Winter vacation will not be missed.

"I am glad that we are planning on a trip, but it is a peasant power of BiH, we always have problems with passports, bidders. It's a shame for the state, it should be normal to surrender, get and not talk about it," says Hasanagić .

He will be with the family at the annual, but many citizens in BiH who date their passports in the following days or weeks could remain trapped within BiH borders.

The old affair is knocking on the door again. Another - tender procedure, another new uncertainty. And while the last days of a one-year contract with Mühlbauer, the new bidders have not yet been selected. First tender dropped, others in progress. Although IDDEEA has announced a tender for the selection of bidders for the purchase of booklets, the complaint of the French company Gemalta, as an interested candidate, was followed by the closing of the closing of tenders, which complained about the text of the tender documentation. Although the decision of the BiH BH Complaints Office was due to be issued in early January due to the complexity of the procedure, this deadline for the decision was extended for another month.

Deadline for decision 15 February. The contract with the current bidder expires on March 22nd.

"The whole procedure can not be completed even though the appeal is rejected, and if it is accepted - only then we will be sure that the deadlines will break out and it is certain that the citizens will be left without a passport," says Ivana Korajlic, TI.

A new alarm for citizens is lit. The Agency for Identification Documents of BiH assures: there is no reason for panic:

"The agency will do everything to ensure that citizens do not remain without documents, such scenarios are not possible. (And, is it possible?) Maybe somebody wants it, but that can not happen. (Can you promise that as a director?) I will do everything to do by law and in time, "says Arif Nanić, director of IDDEEA.

TI BiH warns: we do not learn from mistakes, this is a multi-million dollar contract and in the whole process - everyone is fighting for their part of the cake.

"Obviously, this is the fight of the bidders' interests, but also in the institutions that support one or the other side, but it is absurd that if it comes to extend the deadline with Muhlbauer, they are on the winning side, but citizens will wait and create chaos," Korajlić.

According to the latest tender - in the game for this 4-year job, for which the law provides for the allocation of 25 million and 641 thousand marks without VAT, the two companies are: German company Veridos and publicly known Muhlbauer, who has been doing this job for years.

"This tender has enabled all potential candidates to apply for a tender and according to the principles of public procurement, there is no favoring of the tenderers," Nanić claims.

The passport affair has a much larger dimension. The scandal is the one that was marked by the departures of the director as a result of the alleged illness, which for other reasons. An affair in which, due to suspicion of multimillion-dollar abuse and illegality, the BiH Prosecutor's Office launched an investigation, and another director Siniša Macan was also arrested in 2016. The subject is about whose outcome and course is very little known today. Today, despite our request, the word from the Prosecutor's Office of BiH is not.

• 19 Jan, 2018
• 1269 views