As a counterpart, the Prefecture of Pichincha established a special contribution to vehicles to improve roads.
The award of contracts is close to a million dollars. It is strictly about $910,000 for two contracts. The projects in which public money will be invested are part of the Prefecture’s project to commemorate 200 years of the Pichincha battle, which are close to being held on May 24. The initiatives were carried out in the middle of the December festivities in 2021.
The first award corresponds to the “service of artistic creation of a historic mural” for $480,000. The work was assigned to Pavel Egüez, Ecuadorian artist close to the Citizen Revolution.
The hiring was done through the figure Special Regime in which Egüez was the only one to participate. According to the report that qualified his offer, the muralist met “all the requirements” that were requested for this work.
The location of the mural will be the Eastern facade of the Prefecture building from Pichincha, in the center of Quito. It will be used polychrome pottery. There is a technical report that indicates that said building supports additional loads to place the porcelain.
The size of the work it will be 597, 87 square meters. The artist pointed out in his proposal that in order to have maximum adherence of the materials he will use, a “brushing, chopping and cleaning” of the eastern wall. The lighting of the artistic piece is also contemplated. The process for awarding the contract took 11 days.
Egüez has already painted a mural in the Prosecutor’s Office
It was 2014 and the then attorney general Galo Chiriboga, and former minister of Correismo, participated in the inauguration of the mural ‘Cry of Memory’, unveiled outside the Public Prosecutor’s Office building located on Patria and 12 de Octubre streets. The author of the work, which cost $300,000, was also Pavel Egüez.
Gabriela Rivadeneira, then president of the Assembly, and Ledy Zúñiga, Minister of Justice at the time, accompanied in the unveiling of the ‘millionaire’ work. There, according to an interpretation of the artist, “stories of hundreds of victims of human rights violations and crimes against humanity” were captured. The contract was signed on July 15, 2014, after a process by Special Regime, in which, as now, Égüez was the only one invited to participate.
A contract between acquaintances
In the system of the Public Procurement Service, another contract for “special regime between public entities”. It is a process for the “creation of content, promotion and dissemination to promote the communications activities of the Bicentennial project”, granted to Pichincha Comunicaciones EP, an entity of the Pichincha government itself, represented by Orlando Pérez, also related to Correismo.
The amount earmarked for this project is of $430,000 plus VAT. The contract process took place in 35 days. The services proposed are, for example, the design, creation and distribution of packages with educational tools for teaching the history of the Battle of Pichincha. This includes games, stories, activities, posters, stickers, among other materials. “to value the social and cultural memory of the Bicentennial.”
Pérez works at the television station Telesur, close to Chavismo, and directed the newspaper El Telégrafo while Rafael Correa was president. On his Twitter account he has defended what was done in the government of the Citizen Revolution and now directs Pichincha Communications EP, the public company that operates Radio Pichincha, the radio of the Prefecture itself.
alleged lack of resources
For Natasha Rojas, advisor to the Federation of Quito Neighborhoods, exists, at least “incoherence in the speech of the Provincial Council”. He commented that on the one hand, the Prefecture indicates that there are no resources for rural roads, but there is money for a Bicentennial mural and publicity.
Based on the first, Pichincha Prefecture approved the collection of a special contribution so that from this year, a value is charged to the registration of the vehicles in the province to finance road works, due to the alleged lack of resources. For this rate, the Prefecture plans to raise more than $6 million this year.
Fernando Villavicencio, president of the Supervisory Commission of the Assembly, after knowing the Bicentennial contracting processes and the special contribution of improvements, requested the corresponding information from the Prefecture. “Let the local governments know that they are not exempt from inspection,” he said. However, local authorities, such as the prefect of Pichincha, Paola Pabón, are not subject to sanction by the Legislature. (DPV)
