HIBAPRESS – Rabat
A new scandal has erupted within health and financial circles, following the awarding of a public contract related to nursing services at the new university hospital in Agadir, in circumstances that observers considered "mysterious" and raise more than one question about the method of managing public contracts within the Ministry of Health.
According to circulating data, the contract in question is worth approximately 2.4 billion centimes annually, and aims to manage nursing services within a recently opened hospital institution. The terms of reference clearly stipulated the need for the applying company to have previous experience and proven professional expertise in the field of nursing.
However, the same data indicates that a company specializing mainly in cleaning services won this contract related to nursing, despite not originally having any known professional record in the field of nursing, which sparked sharp questions about the extent to which the terms of the tender were respected, and about the real role of the committee in charge of opening envelopes and evaluating files.
Informed sources indicate that the terms of reference obliged competing companies to provide certificates proving the completion of previous services in the field of nursing with a specific financial value, but the winning company did not have nursing activity included among its legal areas of work at the time of awarding the contract, before it was later included in the Official Gazette weeks after winning the contract.
This data, according to observers, opens the door to two hypotheses that are no less dangerous, either passing a file that does not meet the legal requirements with leniency or possible collusion from the competent authorities, or providing inaccurate or questionable documents during the competition phase, which requires urgent intervention from the supervisory and judicial authorities.
In this context, civil society activists and those interested in public affairs have called for opening an in-depth administrative and judicial investigation to determine responsibilities and arrange penalties, especially in light of the circulation of data about the same company obtaining other similar contracts with the Ministry of Health, which reinforces the hypothesis of structural imbalances in the system of managing public contracts in the ministry.
This issue brings back to the forefront the discussion about the absence of governance and transparency within a vital and sensitive sector such as the health sector, and raises serious questions about the effectiveness of monitoring mechanisms and linking responsibility to accountability, especially when it comes to the right of citizens to qualified health services that respect the adopted standards.
Public opinion remains awaiting official clarifications from the Ministry of Health, as well as the results of any potential investigation, to reveal the truth of what happened and ensure that there is no impunity.
In an attempt to clarify the official position, HIBAPRESS contacted the Ministry of Health to get its opinion regarding this data, but the head of the communication department did not respond to the newspaper's correspondence, which poses a real problem in institutional communication, which will be addressed in subsequent journalistic materials.
