In its response to the MANS’ text on the payment of the so-called thirteenth salary to EPCG employees, the management of this company did not deny any of the facts that we presented in our statement.
On May 24, two weeks before the parliamentary elections, the Board of Directors made a decision on the payment of the aforementioned bonus, in the amount of the average salary at the level of EPCG. Point 8 of the aforementioned decision defines that the aforementioned compensation will be paid to the workers in addition to the June salary, which was also not denied by the EPCG management.
EPCG also did not answer the question why they rushed to make the decision on the payment of bonuses to workers before the elections, and why they did not wait for the adoption of the audit report on the company’s operations at the Shareholders’ Assembly scheduled for the end of June. The management of this company did not deny the information that allowance will be received not only by current employees, but also by those who were previously engaged in that company through employment mediation agencies.
We think that even the management of EPCG can agree that this type of payments opens up a huge scope for misuse.
Finally, EPCG never responded to MANS’s inquiry about the amount of funds that will be paid based on the mentioned Decision. Unfortunately, this is another in a series of information that this state-owned company continuously withholds from the citizens of Montenegro.
MANS continuously warns about the misuse of state funds during the pre-election campaign, and EPCG has so far made a significant effort to hide key information on its operations from the public, especially during the election processes, despite the decisions of the competent authorities that this information must be public.
We are sorry that in the absence of arguments, the management of EPCG used the response to resort to distasteful insults against MANS, and that instead it did not make an effort to answer some of the questions that have been of interest to the public for years, which concern the operations of this company.
Unfortunately, this testifies to the continuation of pressure on MANS by the executive power, which has been especially intensified in the last period, but which certainly will not discourage us from continuing to carefully monitor in what way citizens’ money is spent and point out possible abuses.
MANS Investigative Centre
