Interim Deputy Prime Minister Oana Gheorghiu said on Tuesday, on Facebook, that she had proposed a recovery plan for Metrorex, involving the selection of a team with real experience in restructuring and organisational transformation, capable of taking difficult decisions, renegotiating contracts, reorganising the company and putting it back on a sustainable path.
„Metrorex carries more than 600,000 people every day. The problem at Metrorex is not that it receives money from the state. The problem is that, for years on end, the company’s management and the Romanian state have run Metrorex without any real concern for the company’s long-term health. A company can survive for a long time on subsidies, but it cannot survive indefinitely without the necessary decisions,” Oana Gheorghiu said.
According to her, the metro will never be a profit-making business because in all major cities around the world public transport is subsidised and „that is perfectly normal”.
The interim deputy prime minister said in this context that the company’s cumulative deficit in the 2018-2025 period had reached about 1.17 billion lei, while the real cost of a journey is much higher than the fare.
Moreover, the company pays around 40 million euro a year for maintenance, and the contracts do not appear to sufficiently protect the company’s interests. In addition, extra-salary benefits in the Collective Labour Agreement further increase the bill.
Gheorghiu believes that instead of preparing Metrorex for the future, management tolerated for years a rigid, closed system that has become increasingly difficult to reform.
Furthermore, according to the deputy prime minister, the collective labour agreement contains provisions that have made it extremely difficult to bring in new and competent people from outside: hiring is done only with the union’s agreement; promotions are carried out almost exclusively from within; management ends up permanently negotiating operational decisions that should be taken at managerial level.
„When, for years on end, you bring in almost exclusively people trained within the same system, without real competition and without new expertise, the company inevitably starts to get stuck in its own reflexes,” Oana Gheorghiu said.
In Metrorex’s organisational chart there are: 11 chief accountants overseeing another 35 accountants; more than 100 economic and administrative posts; and 39 engineer-economists.
„I am not saying this to make fun of the people who work at Metrorex. Quite the opposite: Metrorex has many professionals who literally keep the system alive and who work every day in an extremely difficult environment. But precisely in order to protect these people and to protect the company, the truth must be said: a company cannot develop in a healthy way when management avoids difficult decisions for years and lets problems pile up until they become impossible to ignore,” Oana Gheorghiu stresses.
At the same time, the company owns land, premises and sports facilities that are insufficiently exploited, major contracts generate disputes and financial risks, and important decisions are blocked for months between management, the ministry and the union.
„The bill always comes due: through infrastructure that deteriorates; through pressure on the public budget; through poorer services for passengers; or through the idea that the only solution is to raise the ticket price. Yes, probably at some point the ticket price will also have to be discussed honestly. But you cannot ask people to pay more before you clean up the system from within. You cannot demand more from citizens before you cut absurd costs, fix imbalances and show that the existing money is being managed responsibly,” the deputy prime minister added.
Under these conditions, in her capacity as deputy prime minister, she proposed a recovery management for Metrorex.
„That is why I proposed a recovery management for Metrorex, the selection of a team with real experience in restructuring and organisational transformation, capable of taking difficult decisions, renegotiating contracts, reorganising the company and putting it back on a sustainable path. In other words, a professional intervention, carried out in the company’s and passengers’ interests. Because Metrorex does not belong to a party, but to the people who wait every morning on the platform and who have the right to a responsibly run system. What we must understand is that in many state-owned companies, the problem is not a lack of money. The problem is a lack of decisions,” Oana Gheorghiu said on the social network.
AGERPRES
