Cegos, the outsourcing company, attributes to the Government the errors that caused chaos during the tests
The Generalitat of Catalonia will sue the company blindin charge of managing the fiasco of the oppositions on April 29, and will claim one million euros as compensation for the reputational damage caused and the operational damage that repeating the processes will entail for the Catalan administration. More of 13,500 people You must repeat the tests called to stabilize interim personnel. This has been announced by the ‘Councillor’ of the Presidency, Laura Vilagrathis Friday during his appearance in the Parliament of Catalonia.
“We do not shy away from responsibility, that is why we dismissed the general director of the Public Function this week. We could have managed it better, but the company has seriously breached the contract,” Vilagrà declared. The Generalitat communicated this past Thursday to the most representative unions that all the exams of last April 29 must be repeated. The dates of the repetitions will be on Saturdays July 1 and 8.
The specifications of the contract awarded to Cegos included an automatic penalty of 75,000 euros, equivalent to 5% of the total amount of the contract for €1.5 million. However, the Generalitat has already advanced that it would go further and that it would resort to judicial proceedings to force the company to compensate the damage caused. Finally, he will claim a million euros and it must be a judge who decides if the company failed to comply with its obligations or not and if the claim is adjusted or not.
It is the first time that the Generalitat outsources the organization of a selection process and this will end up in court, amid harsh criticism from the opposition and union anger. The IACthe union with the greatest representation among the officials of the Generalitat departments, again requested this past Thursday the resignation of the ‘councillor’ Vilagrà and the general secretary of the ‘conselleria’, Nuria Cuenca.
Cegos replies that the Generalitat is to blame
Cegos has already replied that the responsibility for the fiasco is not his, but that of the Generalitat itself and that he previously warned that what happened on Saturday April 29 could happen. “From Blind the Generalitat was notified of the risks for the correct development of the process on several occasions, without obtaining any response,” the awardee said in her statement.
One of the main causes of the exam chaos was the bad distribution of the opponents by classrooms. In part of them there were more examiners than seats available and most lacked space available to place the candidates with sufficient distance between them to avoid the risk of copying. And said distribution, according to the company, was the exclusive responsibility of the Generalitat. A total of 2,475 opponents They denounced, via the complaints mailbox, said problem.
The corporation also denounces that a week before the exam the Generalitat had still not sent 17% of the total number of copies to be printed, a period of time explicitly contemplated in the service contract. He also states in his statement that until two days before the exams he had not received the final list of the people summoned with their classroom assignment.
Another of the irregularities that occurred during the tests was the lack of personnel for the surveillance of opponents, something that is explicitly contemplated as a responsibility of Cegos. And it is that any opponent who wanted to go to the bathroom had to be accompanied by organizing personnel to avoid leaks of the content of the exams. In many cases, as various testimonies have explained, there were not enough workers per classroom for this. A total of 1,060 opponents have denounced that there were people who left the classroom without supervision, which represents sufficient reason to invalidate the entire test.