They are new, cost 750 thousand euros to the public purse and their purchase was announced with pomp and circumstance. Even so, the ten Mobile Health Units (USM) recently acquired by as many Municipal Councils of the Algarve are stopped because they have been sold like light vehicles, when in reality they are heavy.
There is no doubt that there was a «palm bar error». The dispute is now over who committed it.
If, on the one hand, the Algarve deputy of the PSD Cristóvão Norte, who denounced the situation, speaks of "sloppiness" and the misuse of public money, pointing the finger at the official entities involved, the Regional Health Administration (ARS) of the Algarve ensures that the fault lies with the company that supplied the vehicles, which did not comply with what was stipulated in the tender specifications that won.
According to the PSD deputy elected by the Algarve constituency, there are "750 thousand euros stored in the garage", bearing in mind that all the technical vehicles acquired throughout 2018 are currently not working, "since they do not comply with the maximum weight limit for their category".
The purchase of vehicles was made following a tender launched by AMAL – Comunidade Intermunicipal do Algarve, within the scope of an agreement between the ten Algarve Councils and ARS Algarve.
In this way, mobile units «do not currently have any use, other than being exposed in fairs – as was the case of the Serra de São Brás de Alportel fair, last weekend – serving more for advertising than for caring for people».
"At issue, there are ten vehicles, standardized in terms of equipment, weighing 400 kilos more than allowed, with a generator that does not allow for simultaneous operation with use by users, in a set of errors that cause an impasse that penalizes these populations», summarized Cristóvão Norte.
“It's just another episode of a public administration that is often incompetent, unresponsive, anarchic, in which things are done carelessly and without concern for using public money properly. It is unthinkable for a problem of this nature to happen out of negligence, but it is even more serious to drag on all this time without anyone doing anything, neither the Ministry of Health nor AMAL, all because things are done on top of the knee, without a head, trunk and members,” said the Social Democratic deputy.
Contacted by Sul Informação, Paulo Morgado, president of the ARS do Algarve, guarantees that the public entities involved in this process are victims and not guilty.
«This whole situation was the responsibility of the company that supplied the vehicles, which made a paddle mistake. We were surprised by this situation and we were with the boy in our arms», he assured.
As the person responsible for the Algarve ARS explained to our newspaper, the UMS have all been delivered. When they arrived, they had provisional documentation, so it was necessary to submit them to inspection by the Institute of Mobility and Transport (IMT).
“When the first ones were called, we were surprised that they were overweight. Although the Specifications clearly stipulated that vehicles had to be light, the vans exceeded 3500 kilos by more or less 200 kilos», he said.
Faced with this situation, the Chambers and the ARS had to think about what to do next. And “there were two possibilities: the first was to file a lawsuit in court against the company, to try to be reimbursed for the investment. The second was to urge the winner of the tender to obtain technical documentation from Iveco, the builder of the vans, which would allow them to be legalized as heavy vehicles that can be driven by license holders of light vehicles».
The option was for the second way, which, for Paulo Morgado, is not only “a good solution”, but also “the only solution that, for us, is viable. It will allow the units to function and start serving the population. What interests us is having the service up and running».
The legalization of vehicles is «a simple procedure, but it depends on the provision, by Iveco, of documentation that guarantees that, from the point of view of safety, there is no problem with the vehicle being driven by someone with a car license. ».
Contacts with the car brand have already started and the company says “it will provide this documentation soon”. Until that happens, «the vans have to be stopped».
As for the generators, another of the issues raised by Cristóvão Norte, Paulo Morgado admits that it was “an error in the specifications, which we only noticed when we received the vehicles”.
Because, explained Paulo Morgado, the generators "are authentic monos" in equipment of this nature and do not make sense for a mobile health unit, because they are very heavy, noisy and the smell they emanate, among other characteristics.
“What we did was ask the company to install inverters, which would allow us to use the energy from the batteries, even when the vehicle was turned off. That was done».
As for the generators, «we advised the Chambers to use them for other things, which would certainly find use for them», added the president of the ARS do Algarve.
“We are trying to do the best we can, facing a problem caused by a company that has done badly. Sometimes, the competitions don't go well», concluded Paulo Morgado.
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