The City of Zagreb, Croatia is considering the possibility of postponing the project of building a new Srebrnjak Children's Hospital for the next EU perspective.
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Postponing is considered so that the total burden of 430 million kuna (57 million euros) due to non-fulfillment of obligations would not fall on the City, said Zagreb mayor Tomislav Tomasevic, after the building agreement was terminated by the construction company Kamgrad because the payment was one day late.
The investor is Srebrnjak Children's Hospital and the large part of the money comes from the EU.
"We are considering all legal possibilities, talking to coalition partners and the state about the future of the project because we cannot allow this cost to fall on the city budget," said Tomasevic about closing the construction site at Srebrnjak Children's Hospital.
The European Union is paying almost 60 million euros for the construction of this center, but if the deadlines are not met, the cost of the project will fall on the city budget. Tomasevic accuses late mayor Milan Bandic and the former management of the Srebrnjak hospital of everything.
"The contract was signed in July 2019, two years before I took office as a mayor. The project was supposed to last a little less than three years, until March 2022, and in the first two years only four percent of the project was realized," Tomašević explained.
The first two years, he says, went to waste due to conflicts of the former mayor with the former management of the hospital, after which a new hospital administration was set up.
"There was time that was impossible to make up for, and now there are new complications with the contractors," said Tomasevic, assessing the situation as "unbearable" because the contractor unilaterally terminated the contract due to a delay of a day or two.
Tomasevic says that now the project can be extended until the end of next year, because then the whole EU perspective ends.
If the project is not realized by then, the amount of 430 million kuna (57 million euros) will be borne by the budget of the City of Zagreb. Therefore, the possibility of the project going further, even in the next European perspective, is now being considered with the state. ■