Ankara municipality in trouble
Güncelleme Tarihi:
ISTANBUL - Ankara Metropolitan Municipality’s scholarship handouts to needy students on different dates have raised suspicion during audits carried out by the Court of Accounts, a newspaper reported yesterday.
Daily Cumhuriyet reported that a total of 3.6 million Turkish Liras worth of scholarships was found suspicious after carrying out audits. The Court of Accounts indicated that the scholarship handouts were awarded despite missing documents.
It appears the students who received scholarships from the municipality, run by Mayor Melih Gökçek, did not have the necessary documents that prove they are needy and there are no records of the scholarships being paid.
"It is determined that the documents pertaining to the status of the students who are needy, poor, low income, motherless, fatherless, parentless, children of martyrs or victims of natural disasters are missing and the papers to prove the students families’ economic conditions and the papers to prove that the funds have been paid to those awarded scholarships are missing," said the court.
The Court of Accounts pointed out that 13 municipal officials are responsible for the suspicious scholarships, including Kadir Ramazan Coşkun, former head of the General Secretariat of the Metropolitan Municipality. If the municipality is unable to prove that the money was actually spent on students and the students were truly needy, those responsible will be asked to reimburse the funds. The public’s loss of 3.6 million liras will have to be compensated.
The court also indicated that the regulation used for scholarship handouts is unlawful since the municipality did not consult the court when preparing the regulation for aids.