In all, 420 works have been paralyzed, canceled or even not started, which corresponds to more than 2,400 kilometres, or the distance between São Paulo and Maceió
The Secretary of Agriculture of the Government of São Paulo delivered to the State Audit Office (TCE-SP) a report that flagged “serious irregularities” in the schedule The best way, for the construction of rural roads, between 2021 and 2022. According to the document, around R$ 200 million has been paid for uncompleted works. Another BRL 300 million was spent, according to the analysis Tarcisio Freitas (Republicans), without going through the protocol of internal processes that guarantee the quality of the works. The acts took place in the gestures of João Doria AND Rodrigo García.
In some cases transfers were made to contracting firms without the dispatches with which the inspectors attested that the service had been provided being recorded in the electronic system. In all, 420 works have been paralysed, canceled or even not started, which corresponds to more than 2,400 kilometers of roads, or the distance between São Paulo and Maceió.
The incorrect assignment would have resulted, in addition to the costs with unfinished works, the double payment for the paving of the same section and the failure to comply with the quality requirements set forth in the contract. A Comptroller General of the State has requested access to the files, but some of them have not yet been digitised.
OR Stadium activated the TCE-SP, which received the report in May. According to the advisor, there is still no decision on the irregularities reported in the document. The Secretariat of Agriculture was sought, as were former governors João Doria and Rodrigo Garcia, but they too did not come forward.
The information collected pertains to the program The best wayrelaunched in October 2021, under the direction of the state deputy Itamar Borges (MDB) ahead of agriculture. At that time, he promised to asphalt 5,000 kilometers of extra-urban roads in a year. The goal would represent a tenfold increase in the pace of execution over the previous version of the program, created in 1997, which delivered 12,000 kilometers over 24 years.
However, only 1,600 kilometers were completed up to May of this year, a third of the expected total. In all, R$844 million was contracted to get the work off the ground, with the hiring of 59 contractors, one company to prepare the projects and another to manage them. Despite the delay in schedules, more than half of this amount has already been paid. Borges was approached by the report but declined to talk.
A LBR Engenhariatasked with ensuring compliance with the times and technical parameters of the works, received R$ 23 million, equal to 93% of the contractually agreed value for the entire service.
It is precisely in the management that most of the problems have been found in the current management of the folder. A Rural Logistics Coordination issued service orders for the start of the works that did not yet have an environmental or remediation license from the local administrations.
E-mail exchanges between contractors and government officials show that the lack of legal conditions for the start of work has compromised the timetable. Some companies have also called for the amicable termination of contracts.
According to initial planning, the program would be completed in 24 months, during which 90 orders would be placed. However, as of July 2022, 770 had already been issued. This excess of service orders is seen as a reflection of the lack of control of internal processes and means, in practice, additives, resulting in an increase in public spending.
Four works worth 5.4 million reais were authorized without a signed agreement between the Secretariat and the municipalities. Of these, one is underway in the city of Sales and another in a first phase, in Piracaia. A third is stuck in Araçatuba and another, scheduled for Ilha Solteira, hasn’t even left.
The documents attached to the report also show that the secretariat ignored the inspection reports which revealed, in at least 15 municipalities, the failure to comply with the quality requirements of the works, such as the low density of the so-called “primary lining” and the lack of adequate drainage of rain water.
After the warnings, the department charged only for the update of the execution schedules, regardless of the poor quality of the roads, and also issued new payment notes. In Jarinu, for example, a road paved by LF Locação de Bens contained a third less gravel than the amount requested in the contract, according to inspectors.
In Itajobi, two companies won the tender to pave exactly the same two sections. In a competition, Planex Engenharia was chosen for a contract worth BRL 888,000. Saize Engenharia was responsible for the same route, but for a higher amount, R$ 966,000.
Even with the problems identified, the government paid, at the end of December, to the end of the Rodrigo Garcia government, R$ 50 million in economic-financial rebalancing additives. The work in Jarinu, for example, received R$41,000. The justification used was the economic impact of the war in Ukraine.
The disbursement of this amount has revealed a further problem, according to the secretariat: the outsourcing of the works by companies responsible for their construction, prohibited by the tender. The report contains a copy of a R$500,000 contract signed by CCL Construtora Capital with a third party for the construction of a section in Penápolis under the responsibility of the contractor.
In December last year, the contractor sent an email to the then coordinator of rural logistics asking him to intervene in a deadlock with CCL, which allegedly refused to transfer R $ 68,000 referring to an amendment paid by the government to complete the section. As of April, the company was still seeking to receive CCL value.
The companies mentioned in the article were contacted, but did not respond, with the exception of Saize, which could not be traced.
Reformulation of the programme
Tarcísio Freitas withdrew Melhor Caminho from the authority of Agriculture and transferred him to the Department of Roads (DER), attached to the Secretariat for the Environment, Infrastructure and Logistics, headed by Natália Resende.
The DER is commanded by the Army Colonel Sergio Codelloformer regional superintendent of the DNIT in São Paulo during Tarcísio’s tenure at the Ministry of Infrastructure, in the government of Jair Bolsonaro. He is the governor’s trusted man.
At the beginning of the government, the allies asked Tarcísio to keep the program under the umbrella of agriculture. However, he assessed that a road construction program led by the ministry made no sense to him and forwarded it to Codelo.
Source: Terra
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