Kiril Minovski, Minister of Finance via telephone informed the Director of the Agency for Audio and Audiovisual Media Services, Zoran Trajchevski that the Government has approved funds for the institution. Trajchevski confirmed to “Meta” that the decision had been passed at yesterday’s session and funds are expected to be transferred on Friday.
Otherwise, the Agency should receive 9.2 million denars, which is approximately €150,000 to fund the monitoring of the election.
The ad hoc body for supervising the media, which has been up and running for a month now, say that if the money is not paid on time, the implementation of monitoring will be an issue because they have already received information that the telecom company has already responded to an unpaid debt.
“We’ll see if we get the money. They were meant to pay us 3 out of the 9 million. I now believe we should have asked for all the funding at once, to avoid these problems in the future. We are talking about an amount of money, the Ministry should transfer at any moment, however, the implementation of the actual monitoring is far more important because, besides the wages of the employees and members of the supervisory body, without a telecommunication operator there will be no monitoring. If the operator turns off the signal, we will not be able to realize the monitoring, nor will we be able to prepare the report of the ad hoc body”, said Ljubomir Kostovski, a member of the ad hoc body for overseeing the media.
According to the agreement, these funds should cover the salaries of all the employees involved in the monitoring of the media, the salaries of the five members of the ad hoc body for the supervision and monitoring of the media and the telecommunication operator “VIP”, through which the ad body monitors programs from the media.
However, the Ministry of Finance has said that the procedure for the provision and payment of these funds is impending.
“The Agency for Audio and Audiovisual Media Services are very familiar with the procedure of payment of funds to finance their Agency during the electoral process, which is first decided by Government – a process which is already underway, based on the Ministry of Finance transferring the payment of funds”, said a statement from the Ministry of Finance.
