Spending of a billion for fighting flue in Ukraine will be checked. But they want to do it without community participation!

On the 3rd of November Creative Union “TORO”, Contact group of Transparency International in Ukraine, sent an open letter to the Prime-Minister of Ukraine Yuliya Timoshenko, which related to the non-transparency of using by the government of Ukraine of 50 million hryvnas allocated in summer of the current year for preventing epidemic of Californian flue in the state. On the 5th of November, Ministry of Health of Ukraine created a commission, which will follow the procedure of distribution of money for overcoming flue epidemic.

The newly created commission will control the purchase of medicines, items of medical purpose, works and services in order to prevent spreading of A/H1N1 flue, better known as ‘swine flue’. With the aim of preventing possible abuses Ministry of health invited representatives of Chamber of Accounts of Ukraine, State Service of fighting economic crimes of Ministry of Inner Affairs of Ukraine, Security Service of Ukraine to become members of the commission.

Creative Union “TORO” welcomes the rapid reaction of Ukrainian officials to the open letter and supports the initiative of Ministry of Health on creation of special control organ on using funds, allocated for overcoming epidemic. We would like to remind that on the 3rd of November, the Verhovna Rada of Ukraine by its decision allowed addition allocation of 1 billion hryvnas (around 125 million US dollars) for fighting flue epidemic in Ukraine.

At the same time Ministry of Health’s decision to involve to the membership in the commission exclusively state officials doesn’t allow to talk about the open character of work of this controlling organ. This means that the Ukrainian population is actually deprived of the possibility to know the truth on the effectiveness and purposeful character of usage of essential resources, allocated for fighting epidemic. Taking this into account we suppose that the legitimacy of this commission is directly related to involvement into its composition of the community representatives. Creative Union “TORO” as the Contact group of Transparency International in Ukraine is ready to delegate its representatives to work in the newly created controlling organ. We would like to remind that Transparency International is the most famous in the world anti-corruption non-governmental organization, which has its representation in more than 90 countries of the world, including Ukraine.