ZAGREB, March 4 (Hina) - Croatian Health and Social Welfare Minister Andrija Hebrang has said that today he will send Croatian Journalists' Association (HND) president Dragutin Lucic photocopies of documents on the participation of
reporters in some projects of the Health Ministry in the past period.
ZAGREB, March 4 (Hina) - Croatian Health and Social Welfare Minister
Andrija Hebrang has said that today he will send Croatian Journalists'
Association (HND) president Dragutin Lucic photocopies of documents on
the participation of reporters in some projects of the Health Ministry
in the past period.#L#
In a statement to Hina, Hebrang explained that his statement referred
to a contract Vecernji List reporter Zeljko Kruselj signed with the
World Bank and documents on the appointment of ten reporters to
commissions set up by the ministry, for which they received fees.
Hebrang said that all appointments were lawful and that he would not
have gone public with them if the HND's reporters covering the health
sector had not protested over a statement by a member of the Croatian
Health Insurance Agency's steering committee, Mladen Kovacic, who said
at an informal meeting with the press that reporters writing
affirmatively about the Agency's activities could be rewarded, as
"there are various funds for that purpose".
"I have to protect my people who wanted to establish cooperation with
the press and knew about the practice of my predecessors at the Health
Ministry," Hebrang said. He added that he would leave it to the HND
president to go public with the names of the reporters if he wanted
to.
The minister said that he would seek legal counsel about the case
because Lucic yesterday said he would request that Hebrang's
responsibility be established if the minister did not go public with
the contracts signed with reporters.
Hebrang's predecessor Andro Vlahusic has claimed that during his term
of office the Health Ministry did not sign any contracts with
reporters. The only contract signed in that period refers to a health
reform pilot-project in Koprivnica, which is financed with a World
Bank loan, he said.
"Reporters participated in the work of some commissions which dealt
with issues related to public health, such as the fight against
smoking and obesity, the promotion of a balanced diet and other
issues, and they were given fees for their work, as were other members
of the commissions," Vlahusic told Hina.
He added that the fee for one commission meeting amounted to 250 kuna
and that Hebrang was at the helm of one of the commissions.
"It would be very interesting to read today, for example, the reports
of one reporter who was very critical and wrote many negative reports
about the Ministry's work, and did his part of the job on one of the
commissions very well," Vlahusic said.
Reporter Zeljko Kruselj, whom Hebrang criticised for receiving a fee
of 144,000 kuna, has said that he signed the contract with the World
Bank on the basis of an international invitation of applications and
that he promoted the pilot-project in Koprivnica through the local
media, where he published some 80 articles.
"According to my tax report which I received from the Health Ministry,
I received 55,000 kuna in one year and I don't know how Minister
Hebrang has come up with the amount of 144,000 kuna," Kruselj told
Hina.
"My job was to follow all activities related to the project, help
reporters covering the project with necessary information and inform
the public about the project through the local media," Kruselj said.
Kruselj said he signed the contract for a period of 1.5 years, but he
worked from 1 January 2003 to 31 January 2004, when he considered his
job done as he received no answer from Hebrang to his letter of
resignation.
He said that he did not inform his employer, Vecernji List, of his
contract because he considered it a normal part-time job which he
performed in Koprivnica, where he lives. "I am a political journalist
and in my case there is no conflict of interest because I did not
publish any reports on the health sector in Vecernji List," Kruselj
said.
He believes that Hebrang's going public with his case is an act of
revenge for a report in which he voiced disagreement with the
minister's attitude to the health reform pilot-project in Koprivnica
County.
(Hina) rml sb