PUBLIC NOTICE

We are informing the public that on 25th July 2012 we initiated Administrative dispute against the Municipality Podgorica – Commission for cooperation with NGOs and fund allocation for NGOs of the Podgorica Municipality. The reason for such a reaction is not receiving the information asked from the Department. Namely, on June 8th 2012. the Association of Youth with Disabilities of Montenegro has addressed the Commission for cooperation with NGOs and fund allocation for NGOs of Podgorica Municipality with the Request for free access to information in line with the Law on free access to information (“Official Gazette of Montenegro”, No. 68/05), asking for the following information:

Explanation on why our project is not approved!? Which of criteria were not met by our organization!?

Besides this, we asked to receive public and transparent information from evaluation lists of each member of the Commission deciding about AYDM`s project as well as about 10 approved projects, so as to be able to gain direct insight in the scoring lists of all approved projects and compare them with AYDM`s project. Since it is the obligation of each Commission member to hold and run scoring lists based on which at the end the final sum scoring decides about whether the project is to be approved or not, we asked the Commission to publish the scoring list on the Podgorica Municipality web site and that way eliminate eventual doubts with regard to non-transparent and unprofessional work of the Commission.

Article 16.Paragraph 1 of the Law on free access to information specifies that the Authorities addressed must pass the decision and communicate it to the Requester in time-limit of 8 days from the day of filing the Request. Since the Commission did not respect this specification and failed to decide upon our Request within the time-limit prescribed by the Law, on 19 July we filed an Appeal on silence of the administration.

The Complaint is addressed to Commission as a First Instance Authority since the Decision on fund allocation does not contain the legal precept on legal remedies (answer in Montenegrin language you can find here)  This violates as well the two instances principle of administrative proceeding given by the Law on general administrative procedures. The Commission ignored our Appeal and did not communicate to us, within the time-limit prescribed by the Law and not up to this date, the Decision on rejecting the appeal, nor the Decision on accepting and solving the appeal from the second-tier authority.

Apart of all said, additional reason for our doubting the professional and transparent work of the Commission and conducting in line with the Decision on criteria, manner and procedure of fund allocation to NGOs, are indications that some of the approved projects were favored in advance and as a proof to our allegations we state the examples of projects which have planned the initiation more than a month before passing the Decision, and the project which finishes in the month when the Decision is passed, meaning before the Contract is signed by the NGO and the Mayor.

With this our doings we want to show that we are very well acquainted with legal rights and obligations adopted by our state and concerning all public and legal entities.  Having in mind previously said, we ask that these adopted rights and obligations are respected by the responsible authorities as well.

Executive director
Association of Youth with Disabilities of Montenegro
Marina Vujačić

Contacts: tel/fax:020/265 650

e-mail: marina.vujacic@umhcg.me