Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- On 6 May 2020, the Committee of the Legislative Chamber of the Oliy Majlis for Combating Corruption and Judicial Legal Issues held a video conference call to hear information from the Ministry of Construction on ongoing work to combat corruption in this area.

The attention of parliamentarians is given to questions on the development of specific measures to eliminate factors and eliminate norms in normative legal acts, creating conditions for corruption and bureaucratic barriers in the construction sector.

Unfortunately, some “convenient” norms and rules in the Rules of the construction sector are corruption and bureaucratic factors for employees of the Ministry of Construction system.

In the “Administrative regulation of the provision of public services for the development of architectural planning”, the norm is not defined, according to which, the applicant, in order to receive a document with the appropriate permission, has the right to apply again without paying a fee. And this creates the condition to re-charge additional fees from applicants. Although, according to article 20 of the Law “On licensing procedures in the field of entrepreneurial activity”, if the entrepreneur eliminates the reasons that served as the basis for refusing to issue a permit document within the prescribed period, there is no fee for reconsidering the application of the entrepreneur.

Town-planning norms and rules (GNP) are morally outdated. Committee members noted that they not only do not meet modern requirements, but also unreasonably burden citizens and legal entities with excessive obligations. For example, in the GNP - “Urban planning. Development Planning of the Territories of Urban and Rural Settlements”, the requirements rules for transport cables (trams, trolleybuses) when locating utility networks, as well as determining the land area of residential buildings, are defined. In addition, the GNP also retained the requirements for special equipment of educational institutions (codoscopes, filmoscopes, film rolls, video doubles, dressing tables, air conditioners BK-2500, etc.).

The deputies noted that it was necessary not only to take specific measures aimed at eliminating corruption norms and bureaucracy, but also, in order to properly enforce it, it was necessary to fundamentally revise the GNP.

In most cases, facts of corruption are observed during tenders (competitions), it was emphasized at the hearing. This is especially evident when determining the owners of the rights to carry out capital construction works, where the conflict of interests comes to the fore and there is no transparency and openness. So, according to the Regulation “On competitive bidding in capital construction on the territory of the Republic of Uzbekistan", the tender organizer publishes a tender notice at least 30 days before the date of determining the contractor (supplier) in the media or sends an invitation to potential contractors (suppliers) to participate in competitive bidding (paragraph 46).

Also, in accordance with the Regulation, along with the requirements of paragraph 35, the applicant for bidding may be subject to other requirements established by the customer, which indicates an unlimited range of corruption opportunities in this process.

The deputies were sharply criticized that in this situation, the ministry has not yet taken effective measures to amend and supplement this Regulation.

According to the rules of the construction, stage-by-stage control is carried out at each stage until the end of work. However, especially in practice, despite the fact that high-pressure tests of concrete samples should be issued by the laboratories of the territorial inspectorates for construction supervision, their actual implementation remains on paper, this process does not have an electronic tracking system.

In 2019-2020, according to the prosecutor’s office, the facts of theft were identified for a total amount of 38 billion soums from funds - preferential building materials and other material assets. In 2018-2019, 365 criminal offenses were committed in the construction sector, of which 72 percent are related to corruption. At the same time, out of those prosecuted - 14 are employees of the Ministry of Construction.

According to the Agency for the provision of public services under the Ministry of Justice, only in 2019, when issuing permits to individuals and legal entities from the structures of the Ministry of Construction, 17,418 cases of violation of the law were registered.

As a result of the hearings, the Oliy Majlis Legislative Chamber Committee on Combating Corruption and Judicial Legal Issues decided to remove the norms that create corruption factors in regulatory legal acts, to ensure transparency, openness and implementation of the system for organizing online tenders (competitions) in determining the holders of rights to implementation of construction works, conducting a systemic “anti-corruption internal audit”, reducing the number of by-laws in the construction sector.

Also, measures will be taken to repeal and amend normative legal acts unreasonably burdening citizens and legal entities with excessive obligations, the active participation of the Public Council in the system of the ministry and helping to increase its role in combating corruption.