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Janis Slams Transport Ministry, Vazny Takes Different View
Sunday 23 May 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, May 23(TASR) - As the polling day of June 12 draws near in Slovakia, the Government and Opposition are crossing swords over the work of government ministries such as the one in charge of the transport sector.
Opposition SDKU-DS party lawmaker Stanislav Janis claims that motorway-building projects via private-public partnerships (PPPs) are overpriced by €1 billion, and that the electronic road-toll collection system by €200 million. "The Transport Ministry will therefore go down in history as a state racketeer," said Janis.
According to him, the ministry has all along kowtowed to Prime Minister and leader of the strongest ruling party Robert Fico. "It caved in and pursued Robert Fico's non-feasible media pledge that Bratislava and Kosice would be linked by a motorway in 2010," he said.
Transport Minister Lubomir Vazny takes a different view of the PPP motorway projects, saying that they are the biggest accomplishment of his four-year management of the ministry. "I believe that as far as PPP projects go, I have left behind a great deal of well-done work and we've succeeded in plugging the hole created by the previous government in that it failed to bankroll the construction of motorways consistently," he told TASR.
As for the toll system, Vazny thinks that, notwithstanding all the strikes and protests by hauliers, it's a unique system in Europe. "It's only the Slovak toll system that charges for motorways as well as for first category roads," he said, stressing that the system was implemented well both in its trial run and in full operation.
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