villa plus. Justyna Suchecka-Jadczak and Piotr Szostak on the arrangements for the subsidy from the Minister of Education, Przemysław Czarnek

Journalists tvn24.pl Justyna Suchecka-Jadczak and Piotr Szostak described how money from the fund of the Minister of Education and Science Przemysław Czarnek went to organizations close to Law and Justice. Multi-million subsidies were allocated for the purchase of new premises.

READ MORE: villa plus. Public money for organizations close to PiS. List >>>

At the same time, many educational organizations and educational institutions did not receive a single zloty from the ministry’s budget. More than half of the 46 awarded organizations had previously received negative feedback on their applications.

The authors of a series of articles on this matter told on Saturday morning on TVN24, among other things, how they got information about real estate, the purchase of which for organizations close to PiS was financed by the Minister of Education and Science with subsidies from public money.

As Justyna Suchecka-Jadczak said, at the end of the holidays, Minister Czarnek “launched competitions for very large amounts of money and decided the first of these competitions in October”.

– It was not a large amount – noted the tvn24.pl journalist. – It was 10 million zlotys. I got a list of organizations, Piotr came to my aid and we started checking them out. In a moment it turned out that there is another competition – for the 20 [milionów złotych – przyp. red.]. Another one in 100 million and another one in 40. We knew then that we were dealing with something very serious – she added.

She reminded that on 4 November the minister settled the real estate competition. – Since then, since the beginning of November, Piotr and I have been trying to find out who got the money, because it was clear, the ministry published this list, but what he got the money for, how he would spend it, and more importantly, and very difficult to determine, who did not get the money, because it could show us which projects the minister appreciates, but also which he does not respect – said the tvn24.pl journalist.

– Already in November we applied to the Ministry of Education for a list of organizations, for applications, evaluation protocols. We wanted all this. The ministry first extended the deadline for us to respond, extended it – speaking professional language – and then when this deadline expired in mid-January, i.e. two months after the end of the competition, the ministry said that they could not provide us with this data, because we did not show the public interest for which they would anonymise us, for example, protocols – said Suchecka-Jadczak.

She emphasized that “today it is quite clear what this social interest was and that it was completely not where this interest was seen by the Ministry of Education.”

According to Suchecka-Jadczak, “the fact that we have been trying to collect these documents for so long that we wrote to each of these organizations, several dozen and several hundred others in other competitions [z pytaniami – przyp. red.]what they did, how they spent the money, who will benefit from it, only at the end we compared it with parliamentary control, shows that this competition was not even close to transparent “.

Piotr Szostak referred to the issue of subsidizing organizations that received a negative opinion on the applications submitted in the MEiN competition for funding. – We must remember that these expert committees are only advisory bodies. It was always a political decision of the minister in the end, he said.

– We often saw in these applications that the ministry’s expert everywhere said that a given organization, for example, does not meet the staffing requirements, experience in the field of education and so on, everywhere there was a “no” and in the end this subsidy was awarded – he added.

In his opinion, this shows how “facade and non-transparent this competition is.”

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One such organization is Po Wings Foundation mental health prevention. Its representative Żaneta Rachwaniec said on TVN24 that the foundation had applied for over PLN 88,000. – The application was positively evaluated, but we did not receive funding, even though the amount compared to others was quite small – she said.

– This shows that this is not only a story about greed, some cynical politics and pumping out public money, but also about successive generations of children and youth (…) whose chances for a better education have been undermined – assessed Szostak.

Suchecka-Jadczak pointed out that the list included nearly 150 organizations that received positive evaluations. – Most of them had amounts of PLN 80,000, 50,000 – she added.

She added that from one grant in the amount PLN 4.5 million for the Megafon Foundation for Common Affairs “it would be possible to finance a dozen, if not several dozen, of these small projects.” – And these people just asked for buildings to be adapted to the needs of people with disabilities, for equipment that helps to work with people with disabilities, these were associations running small, rural schools – she mentioned. “There was no doubt that these were educational goals,” she added.

– This hurts us very much, because it shows that not only politicians have gained, but also thousands of children have lost – assessed the tvn24.pl journalist.

One such organization that helps children and has not received funding is the Koocham Foundation. For seven years, she has been supporting the development of her charges who struggle with various disabilities at the same time.

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