- For one year, the Agency for Social Assistance kept in secret the report of the inspection carried out in February 2018 at the Directorate for Social Assistance in Gabrovo.
- The findings of the inspection are official and not publicly available information, according to the Agency.
- According to the court, the findings of how employees in a directorate perform their duties “secure the interest of social assistance recipients who are a vulnerable group in the community.”
It took nine months for Krasimira Marinova, editor-in-chief of the television channel FOCUS in Sevlievo, to receive a copy of report from the inspection carried out in the Directorate for Social Assistance in Gabrovo. After having been denied access to the document on the grounds that it contained proprietary information, the report was made available to her by a decision of the Sofia City Administrative Court. This decision canceled also the refusal of the Executive Director of the Agency for Social Assistance to provide the report requested under the Public Information Access Act.
Irresponsibility in action
The inspection at the Gabrovo Directorate for Social Assistance, which cost the position of its director Radostina Bratanova, was performed in February 2018. At that time, a team of the Agency for Social Assistance entered the Directorate for complex audit, the results of which remained a secret for a long time. Since the first day of the inspection, Bratanova was in sick leave for a long time and at the end she didn’t return to work. After half a year of sick leave, she left the directorate by her will, though in the spring of 2018 the Minister of Labor and Social Policy Bisser Petkov told the National Assembly that violations had been found in the Social Assistance – Gabrovo, for which disciplinary proceedings will be instituted against the Director.
The procedure that is outlined in the Civil Servants Act requires the director to be asked questions to clarify facts and circumstances about the violations identified. Since Radostina Bratanova was in sick leave until the day of her discharge, no explanation could be asked from her. As a result, she was dismissed without liability for 43 violations described in a 50-pages report. The report presented in detail the method of work in the Gabrovo Directorate.
Check for official use
After Minister Biser Petkov announced that in Social Assistance – Gabrovo the social legislation has been violated and there was a connection between Director Bratanova and the social services home in the Gabrovo village of Yavorets, which is her daughter’s property, the editor-in-chief of the TV channel Focus Krasimira Marinova requested a copy of the report describing the findings of the commission that conducted the inspection. The Agency for Social Assistance refused to provide it, explaining that: “the check concerns the internal organization of work and this information is for official use only”. In other words, how a state structure, such as the Directorate for Social Assistance in Gabrovo, works is not a matter of public interest.
Another reason for hiding information from the inspection is the Personal Data Protection Act. The document contained information about third parties who did not consent to it being disclosed and “in order to protect their interests” the Agency for Social Assistance refused the information. The refusal was despite the explicit written request of Krasimira Marinova to delete any information that could be considered personal data within the meaning of the Personal Data Protection Act.
The court’s decision
With the assistance of the legal team of the “Access to Information Program” Foundation, Marinova filed a lawsuit against the Social Assistance Agency’s arguments, and the case was decided at first instance and the court’s opinion had already entered into force. As a result, Marinova has a limitation inspection report because the violations found therein were committed by a director who, meanwhile, had left the system. In this sense, the opinion of the court panel that the information requested by the journalist may form an opinion on the work of the Gabrovo Directorate is already unnecessary.
So what
One year after the inspection, half a year after Minister Biser Petkov promised penalties and nine months after the report was requested, it is no longer up-to- date. It is irrelevant that the court assesses the existence of overriding public interest and its decision to withdraw the document from the Agency for Social Assistance for more transparency in what is happening in its local units. Against the backdrop of the events that followed, this is already useless.
It is not without reason also, the assumption, that the refusal of information in this case is not because it was official or in order to protect the personal data of several officials. The purpose of the refusal was to gain time during which the 50-pages report, with 43 serious violations, will become just a pile of useless paper.
