Information from the Board about events of the week (April 29 – May 5)
The closure of the viaduct in Deglava Street continues to cause “Rīgas satiksme” additional expenditures in the amount of nearly EUR 5000 per week. Thanks to the support from the Riga City Council Transportation Department, new public transport lanes were organized in Nīcgales Street, between Dzelzavas Street and Deglava Street. Unfortunately, it could be seen that car drivers ignored them.
Given the fact that the Board members were busy with solving individually issues pertaining to areas of their responsibility, the technical meeting of the Board was postponed to Tuesday. On Monday, Riga Vice Mayor O. Burovs met representatives of Škoda Transportation, accompanied by the ambassador of the Czech Republic, M. Koseks. It has been recognised at the meeting that solving disputes between the parties is overdue and a solution must be found as soon as possible. The parties agreed that the final solution had to be reached until the end of May, this year. At the same time, it cannot be denied that disputes persist and the parties disagree over the scope of their liabilities and obligations set by the contract. The solution of this issue shall be considered one of the key priorities of the coming month. In the talks, “Rīgas satiksme” was represented by Board Chairman Dr. iur. E. Saulītis and Board member J. Švanders.
The Board’s technical meeting, which was held on April 30, discussed issues of the company’s day-to-day operations. The focus was on fulfilling the schedule of implementing the recommendations made by audit company “Ernst&Young Baltic”, and the Board decided to start the preparation of the progress statement. Later on, the Board met with representatives of the company’s auditor, “PriceWatewhouseCooper”, to discuss the completion of the annual reports and the deadlines of submitting this report to the Board, because the initial deadline (May 7) needs to be postponed due to a complicated situation.
Due to the Labour Day celebrated on May 1, there was no Board meeting on Thursday, and the Board continued to solve individually issues pertaining to the area of its responsibility. On that day, we learned about the decision of the Central Contracting and Finance Agency (CLFA) to withdraw unilaterally from its agreement with “Rīgas satiksme” on the Skanste tramline building project. CFLA also announced that until August 3 “Rīgas satiksme” had to repay EUR 451,304. 00 used so far for the project implementation. “Rīgas satiksme” will look very carefully at the motivation of this decision, which is of a rather big volume, yet it is already clear that the decision is based on assumptions, not facts. “Rīgas satiksme” has not received so far any reply to its letter sent in April, in which it asked CFLA to provide information on issues that were significant for the continuation of the project. In this situation, “Rīgas satiksme” will consider the possibility of using its rights under the Civil Proceedings Law to countersue CFLA for losses it has caused.
On Friday, May 3, a meeting was held on the initiative of the State Police, in which acting Riga Mayor O. Burovs, Vice Mayor V. Baraņņiks, officials of the State Construction Control, representatives of Riga City Construction Board and Riga City Council Transport Department participated. “Rīgas satiksme” was represented by Dr. iur. E. Saulītis, Board Chairman J. Meirāns and Director E. Zivtiņš, who is in charge of organizing transport traffic. An agreement was reached during the talks on the conditions of restoring transport traffic on the viaduct in Deglava Street, as well as on further steps that need to be taken by the local government to restart repair works on the viaduct and to normalize transport flows in Riga.
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