Ministry of Transport is waiting for Polskapresse to give a word of explanation

In articles “Polaczek straci pracę za brak autostrad” (Eng. Polaczek will lose his job for he does not build motorways), Dziennik Bałtycki and „Premier rozlicza ministrów” (Eng. Prime Minister settles accounts with the Ministers), Dziennik Łódzki, there was reported a wrong date of the meeting of Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński with Minister of Transport Jerzy Polaczek. The meeting took place on 12 January 2007, and not as the newspapers hereabove put it on 3 January 2007. That proves the articles were written on the basis of the thesis settled in advance that the Minister is inefficient and incompetent.

It is not true that Poland has not been good enough with EU funding absorption assigned to reconstruction and modernisation of road infrastructure in Poland. Year 2006 was breakthrough as the Ministry of Transport impressively increased EU funding absorption, ie from May 2005 to October 2005 – 174,000 EUR, and from November 2005 to the end of 2006 – 186,000,000 EUR, under the Sectoral Operational Programme – Transport (SOP-T). The amount of the absorbed funds and the effort which the Ministry took were appreciated by EU Regional Policy Commissioner Danuta Hübner who sent a letter of congratulations to the Minister of Transport.

The Ministry of Transport is used to seeing similar articles in different regional newspapers that belong to Polskapresse, but articles reporting events before they really happen and coming to conclusions settled in advance irrespective of the course of events and hard facts, and dishonest manipulation of facts, are grossly in contradiction with journalist ethics and fairness.

The Ministry of Transport firmly objects to such manifestations of practice and is waiting for Polskapresse to give a word of explanation.