The Government of the Generalitat will claim compensation of at least one million euros from the company hired to organize the failed oppositions held last weekend for the “damages caused so far” to the opponents and the Catalan administration.
This was announced by the Councilor of the Presidency, Laura Vilagrà , in her appearance yesterday at the Parliament of Catalonia to take account of the organizational disaster of the tests to which more than 13,500 applicants appeared. A chaos for which Vilagrà blamed the contracted company (Cegos) for “logistical or mechanical tasks”, a position that justifies the Government’s decision to terminate the contract for “flagrant breach” and open a case of patrimonial responsibility.
The councilor announced the demand for compensation hours after publicly informing that “trust in the entire process” was considered broken and this forces all the exams to be repeated on July 1 and 8. But this time with “own resources”, that is to say, organized entirely with civil servants from the Generalitat.
“What happened is unjustifiable and completely breaks the contractual conditions” with the company because “what failed was the monitoring, the organization”, which was the responsibility of Cegos, according to Vilagrà , “not the previous process”.
The councilor showed her displeasure and that of her team for what has happened, but rejected the possibility of resigning, claiming that “I am not one of those who leave when there are problems or obstacles”. In fact, only Vox openly demanded his resignation yesterday. The CUP urged him if he did not rectify the process of stabilizing public employment, Junts wondered what the consequences would be of repeating the exams and the PSC was lenient: “At the moment we are not asking him to resign, but “he deserves it”.
What all the parties agreed on was to criticize the councilor for outsourcing the organization of the tests. But Vilagrà denied everything: “Outsourcing, nothing. What we did was commission a support for a selection that is from the Government of the Generalitat”, he pointed out.
In fact, the councilor justified the contract due to the lack of own staff to organize the oppositions and the choice of Cegos due to his experience in this area with other administrations, such as Valencia, Madrid or Barcelona.
Vilagrà also justified the dismissal of the Director General of the Public Service, Marta Martorell, due to the need not to shirk responsibilities. “We are terminating it because it is clear that we could have done better, but the company has breached the contract”, he insisted.
The tender awarded to Cegos includes an automatic penalty of 75,000 euros, but the Government wants to go further and force the company to compensate for the damage caused. The position of Cegos, which blames the Generalitat for the mess, makes it predictable that the case will end up in the hands of justice. It will be a judge who will determine whether the contract was breached and whether the amount demanded from the company corresponds to the harm caused.
