The new act on the protection of beneficiaries, which several ministries worked on jointly, is finally intended to provide support to people injured in connection with failed investments under programs such as “Clean Air”. According to National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management estimates, the problem affects up to 13,000 people. families who paid advances for modernization activities but did not see the projects implemented.
“We have over 13 thousand unsettled advance payments on timeand this means that 13 thousand families have a problem. These were often amounts ranging from PLN 50,000 to PLN 65,000. PLN,” explains Robert Gajda. As he adds, sometimes investments did not start at all, and in some cases companies disappeared from the market.
The draft act was prepared with the participation of the Ministry of Climate and Environment, the Ministry of Funds and Regional Policy, the Ministry of Justice, as well as the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection and the Fund itself. “This is a joint work of several institutions. The document was submitted for government work at the end of November. We hope that the government will deal with the project in the first quarter of next year,” says Gajda. He adds that he does not expect political resistance because “it is a cross-party issue.” He confirmed that he expected the bill to be submitted to the Sejm around mid-year.
System bottlenecks
However, operational problems continue to slow down the pace of program implementation. As a representative of the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management points out, not all municipalities have joined the operator system, which makes it difficult to process applications. “Out of approximately 2.5 thousand communes, only 1,341 have signed operator agreements. This means that residents of over a thousand communes are deprived of local support. Sometimes they have to travel 200 km to submit an application to the provincial fund,” Gajda points out.
As a result, queues are getting longer – one operator can handle only four applications a day, because each case requires a thorough explanation of the rules, documentation and audit. “We would like the system to receive approximately 3-3.5 thousand applications per week. For now, the number of operators and the level of their training remain a barrier,” he adds.
New financing rules
According to the deputy president of the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management, the latest version of the “Clean Air” program has introduced changes aimed at limiting the scale of fraud. Pre-financing of investments has been reduced to 35%, and advances are paid only when the work actually starts. This is to prevent companies from collecting funds immediately after signing the contract and withdrawing from the implementation.
“Some say it's a percentage of cases, but for these several thousand families it's a life tragedy. They trusted the state and were left without funds and without investments,” Gajda emphasizes.
The government bill is intended to allow them to recover at least part of the lost money and restore confidence in the support system for ecological investments.
