Engagement of Personnel through Private Agencies and Contractual Arrangements Affects the Continuity and Quality of Services at the Office for General and Common Work (OGCW)

STATE AUDIT OFFICE

- Press Release-

Skopje, 05.02.2026

Engagement of Personnel through Private Agencies and Contractual Arrangements Affects the Continuity and Quality of Services at the Office for General and Common Work (OGCW)

The extensive engagement of personnel through private employment agencies, under fixed-term contracts and service contracts, to perform the functions of the Office for General and Common Work affects the continuity of service delivery to other institutions, as well as the quality of information presented in the financial statements of state bodies that rely on these services

The State Audit Office conducted an audit of the financial statements of the Office for General and Common Work of the Government of the Republic of North Macedonia, together with a compliance audit for 2024, and issued four audit reports:

Truthfulness and Fair Presentation of the Financial Statements		Compliance with Laws and Regulations
637 631 787 789		637 631 787 789
unqualified opinion	qualified opinion	adverse opinion	disclaimer of opinion

The audit identified weaknesses in the valuation of assets managed by the Office for General and Common Work (OGCW):

Land- 19.970.454.000 denars:

Land records are maintained in real estate books and asset registers by location; however, they are not reconciled with area data from property deeds or cadastral parcels, which affects the valuation of the land.
Land on Jordan Mijalkov Street (former barracks of the Office for General and Common Work), valued at 439.734 000 denars, is still recorded, even though it was long ago sold, and a private legal entity has constructed buildings.
For land valued at 130.201.000 denars in Strumica, Kičevo, Kumanovo, Veles, Štip, and Dojran, the Office for General and Common Work has no data or information on its use or any changes in ownership.
The records for the land surrounding the buildings are not updated to reflect changes in users, which is contrary to Government decisions. This creates a risk of uneconomical use or transfer by third parties.

Equipment – 134.704.000 denars, current value:

We found that 92% of the equipment’s value is fully depreciated, indicating that the Office for General and Common Work is operating with mostly old equipment.
There are 865 water pumps and 18 generators recorded, only a small portion of which are held by the Office for General and Common Work. The equipment, procured in 2016 to address flooding in the village of Stajkovci for 19.592.000 denars, was mostly provided to the Ministry of Defense – ARM, and the remainder to the municipalities of Shuto Orizari, Aerodrom, Ilinden, and Aračinovo, without supporting documentation.

Inventories- 48.247.000 denars

The value of spare parts inventories held in the warehouse amounts to 11.587.000 denars, of which 95% are obsolete and unusable. Although the inventory counts in 2023 and 2024 identified obsolete inventory and proposed its derecognition, it had not been derecognized as of the date of the audit.
The 2024 inventory identified a shortage of small tools and equipment in use amounting to 4.208.000 denars. No measures were taken to establish employee accountability, as it could not be determined whether the shortage resulted from improper management by responsible staff or from identified deficiencies in the inventory management software.

We found that certain activities of the Office for General and Common Work (OGCW) are not in compliance with the laws and bylaws:

In 2024, a total of 3.274.000 denars were paid for 21 temporarily engaged persons under contracts concluded with private employment agencies. Some of these individuals were engaged to perform regular duties corresponding to Category B positions, namely heads and assistant heads of sectors and departments, which, pursuant to Article 24 of the Law on Administrative Servants, require a high level of knowledge, competencies, experience, and relevant certifications.
There is an inconsistency between the “other specific requirements” for the position of “flight dispatcher” in the Aircraft Transport Department, as set out in the Office’s Rulebook on Job Classification—which allows the position to be filled with or without a flight dispatcher license—and the mandatory licensing requirements prescribed in the Rulebook on Flight Dispatchers. We observed that, within the job classification, the lower-ranked position of “assistant flight dispatcher” explicitly requires a valid flight dispatcher license.

In relation to public procurement procedures, we identified the following findings:

Under a contract signed in September 2021 for the physical security of government administration facilities, we identified elements of favoritism in the assessment of bidders’ technical and professional capacity. Specifically, the requirement that a bidder must have concluded at least three contracts of the same type in the last three years, with at least one contract valued at a minimum of 50,000,000, was restrictive.
For the service of motor vehicles owned by the Office, a framework agreement was concluded with three economic operators, with a total value of 10.620.000, including VAT. For two of the operators, 50% of the services and spare parts procured in 2024 were not included in the technical specifications and price list, indicating inadequate planning of required parts.

Findings related to services provided in the Office’s restaurants and buffets

A Daily Financial Report Book is not prepared to record total turnover and VAT as required by the Law on Registration of Cash Payment.
Cash payments for services are deposited several months late, with outstanding deposits dating back to 2023.
A low amount of daily market payments was observed due to interruptions in the operation of fiscal equipment. For June 2024, no fiscal receipts or cash register slips were issued for cash turnover.
Following the 2024 inventory, a discrepancy of 4.187.000 denars was identified between the accounting records and the actual stock of food products in the main warehouse, with no measures proposed to address the issue.

Recommendations have been made to address the identified issues and urge relevant institutions and responsible persons to take necessary actions to improve the situation.

In the Emphasis of Matters section, we disclosed information on certain states of affairs which arise from the operations of the Office for General and Common work:

Regarding the established practice of the Office to provide high-class official vehicles to multiple institutions through leasing, we noted that:

Procedures or guidelines regulating the planning of vehicle procurement needs are lacking.
Institutions have not provided information on whether the continued leasing of vehicles remains necessary or whether the procurement is justified.
There is no practice of conducting a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the economic justification for leasing, including all costs and associated benefits, i.e., a cost-benefit analysis.
It is necessary to formalize the procedure for preparing technical specifications to ensure competition among economic operators, as only one bidder participated in the last three public procurement procedures.

Forty-five vehicles are provided through leasing contracts, resulting in substantial annual outflows from the State Budget.

We advised the responsible authorities to accelerate the establishment of the State Real Estate Register, as frequent changes in users, buildings, office space, and their temporary allocation create:

Uncertainty over the use and management of land around and beneath buildings.
Unresolved issues regarding ongoing and investment maintenance of buildings housing multiple institutions.
A risk of incomplete recording of assets managed by OGCW due to inadequate record-keeping and staffing constraints.

We disclosed information regarding human resources in the Office for General and Common Work (OGCW):

A significant portion of a department or sector head’s tasks is performed by individuals authorized to carry them out in addition to their regular responsibilities.

Apart from the generic training programs provided for in the annual training plan, no other training programs have been conducted.

The high number of fixed-term and temporary staff, frequent turnover, and limited investment in professional development pose risks to the continuity and quality of financial reporting for the government institutions that benefit from these services.

Press Contact:

Albiona Mustafa Muhaxhiri +389 72228 203 [email protected]
Mijalche Durgutov +389 70 358 486 [email protected]
Martin Duvnjak +389 75 268 517 [email protected]