Filenews 15 July 2023 - by Marilena Panayi
"Assets endowed to the Agency in accordance with the provisions of this Law may not be sold by the Agency unless their sale has been previously approved by the Government with the consent of the House of Representatives."
The organization in this case is the State Health Services Organization and the law, the law governing its operation. As a result of article 16(4) of the SHSO law, basements, warehouses and even parking spaces in public hospitals are closed in order to stack there thousands of broken chairs, beds, wheelchairs, computers of outdated technology, mattresses, shelves, chests of drawers and everything else the human mind can imagine, because in order for the organization to be able to sell them, for recycling rather in the state they are, it must first get the approval of the House.
During the last meeting of the parliamentary committee on Health, the SHSO attempted this. A detailed list was submitted to the committee including all damaged and unusable items and the organization requested the consent of the Parliament to proceed with their sale through the auction process, as followed by state warehouses in similar cases.
In fact, as we are informed, the process of recording all objects and equipment lasted for more than eight months and then, following all legal procedures, the SHSO contacted the General Accounting Office of the state which proceeded with the value assessment.
The volume of unusable equipment is currently huge since many of them have been collected for years, since the pre-SHSO era, in the warehouses and basements of hospitals.
The situation is identical in all major public hospitals in the cities. In Limassol they had to close part of the parking lot with fencing in order to be store items, while in Nicosia basements and warehouses are already overcrowded and the relevant SHSO management no longer has other spaces to allocate for the safe storage of these items. If they are stolen, the SHSO will probably be in trouble again.
The effort made last week by the SHSO in Parliament did not yield results, since AKEL MPs, mainly, expressed their reservations about whether it is the responsibility of this committee to give the necessary approval to the organization. Therefore, and given the fact that Parliament was closed for the summer recess, the valuable spaces of public hospitals will remain occupied with all kinds of materials, at least until autumn.
The SHSO is unhappy about this, as several of the spaces that are currently occupied could be used in another way that would facilitate the operation of public hospitals.
Not even a chair can get rid of the SHSO
It is reported that this provision in the legislation governing the operation of the SHSO was added when, during the relevant bill, strong concerns were expressed by some parties who argued that if this reference was not included, the organization would be given the opportunity to sell state property uncontrollably.
This discussion mainly concerned the concerns of some about the possible sale/privatization of state hospitals and other state health structures that were endowed to the SHSO, with the positions of those who reacted being quite intense during the meetings of the Parliament's Health Committee.
In order to dispel the concerns of the parties and especially AKEL, there was a consensus and it was decided that in order for the SHSO to sell off any property, including armaments, it must first secure the consent of the Parliament. As can be seen, no provision was made for the sale of damaged and old equipment, with the result that at the moment the organization is not able to sell a single damaged chair.
It is noted that, in case the legislation is not amended accordingly, the SHSO will proceed with exactly the same procedure every time it needs to sell damaged equipment. Of course, it is estimated that the volume of such equipment will be considerably smaller.
