The Secretary of State in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Raed Arafat, declared on Saturday in Focsani that approximately 600 new ambulances will be delivered, starting in May, to the County Ambulance Services and SMURD.

According to him, there were delays in procurement due to disruptions in the supply chain, amid major changes in the post-pandemic period, when prices and delivery times changed significantly.

„It wasn’t our fault that the purchase was delayed. The problem was in the market. We had the framework agreement, no one wanted to sell. The companies didn’t want to sign subsequent contracts. The auction has been completed. We expect the first deliveries in May or June. So those who say all day that it wasn’t done, we didn’t manage to do it, I’m sorry to disappoint them. (…) The first approximately 600 ambulances will arrive starting in May and they will start distributing them at the County Ambulance Service level and at the SMURD level. But the large number goes to the Ambulance Services. So the delay, once again, was due to the disruptions that occurred in the supply chain, the change in prices and the fact that the framework agreement was before the pandemic, and „After the pandemic, prices increased a lot, and delivery times increased, and companies were no longer interested, and even companies said: ‘We want a new tender, according to the conditions that now exist in the market.’ And that was done,” said Raed Arafat.

Regarding the possibility of decentralizing ambulance procurement, the head of the DSU warned that such a measure would harm the current unitary system, which ensures the compatibility of equipment at the national level.

„The advantage of our system is that it is standardized, that any car, anywhere, is similar to a car from another place. That is, fire trucks, (…) wherever you come from, from any county, if they send you to an earthquake in a locality and you come from Timisoara, your car will be identical to the cars from that county. It’s the same with ambulances. SMURD and the Ambulance have the same equipment. (…) Decentralizing ambulance procurement is not a good step at all. And this means that soon, if we do this, each Ambulance Service will have something else, other equipment, other materials. And when they meet, one does not know what the other is doing. And we want to avoid this. We have kept this in the country for so long and we are not doing it at the request of some and others now, to „We are destroying a system,” Arafat said.

At the same time, he emphasized that even in the decentralized version, the procurement of ambulances would not have been faster, and the costs would have been considerably higher.

„And if they made separate purchases, 1 – they bought much more expensively, because it’s economy of volume, maybe at double the price of the ambulance than we buy centrally, and 2 – they had the same problem with delivery times. Nothing changed,” the head of the DSU added.

Raed Arafat was present on Saturday, in Focsani, at the inauguration of the new headquarters of the Vrancea Emergency Situations Inspectorate, together with Alanna Simpson, coordinating specialist in disaster risk management – World Bank, the inspector general of IGSU and the deputy inspector general of IGSU, general Dan-Paul Iamandi.

AGERPRES