Manaus City Hall delivered expired food to families in need

Priscilla Peixoto – From Cenarium

MANAUS – The councilman and ombudsman of the City Council of Manaus (CMM), Amom Mandel (Podemos), denounced on Wednesday, 11, a corruption scheme to distribute expired food in food baskets to families in need, and other possible fraud involving the acquisition of products purchased by the Manaus City Hall, through the Municipal Department of Women, Social Welfare and Citizenship (Semasc), which is headed by Jane Mara Silva de Moraes.

According to the parliamentarian, the scheme involved bidding R $ 2.1 million for the purchase of 15 thousand food baskets, in a bidding process that he highlighted as “strange” and that was completed in March this year, through the Purchasing and Bidding Portal of the Manaus City Hall. Still, according to councilman, the company that offered the lowest value in the price bids was preterit by the company T R DO NASCIMENTO FORNECIMENTO DE ALIMENTOS EIRELI.

The company, Amom Mandel highlights, was responsible for delivering the products to the Social Assistance Reference Centers (Cras), which enabled the distribution of the expired food to vulnerable families in the capital of Amazonas.

“Besides the bidding process has not been completed electronically, nor published in the transparency channels of the city administration, as found in the municipal government purchasing portal, the Manaus City Hall bought the food from a company that sold the items more expensive than those offered by other companies. To get an idea, a food basket with 29 items cost R$ 140 a unit. In the bidding, companies offered the same products for R$ 88 or R$ 90”, said Amom Mandel.

Amom recalls that when he visited the Cras, he found that the products were ripped and torn. “We found ripped baskets, torn when we got there [at the Cras], we questioned about the rupture of these baskets and the coordinator, initially, informed us that she didn’t know about this rupture. We took these baskets and checked item by item to compare with other baskets found in other Cras and, to our surprise, was what we found missing precisely the expired items: the cookie and dairy compound”, he stressed.

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