Conservatives accuse Lan Marie Berg of hiding crucial information

The MDG council itself categorically rejects the accusations.

On Friday, Environment Councilor Lan Marie Berg (ODM) was questioned in a separate hearing about the many violations of the Work Environment Law that were discovered in the municipality of Oslo last year and the year before last.

Finansbyråd Einar Wilhelmsen (ODM) will go to press on the same case later today.

The background of the consultation is that last year more than 250,000 violations of the rules on working time were discovered in the municipality of Oslo. NRK in particular has mentioned this.

The consultation also addresses violations of hiring rules and disorderly management appointments.

This applies, among other things, to the Energy Recycling Agency, for which Lan Marie Berg is responsible for the MDGs.

ODM city council accused of withholding information

Berg received a tirade Friday from a question from conservative Eirik Lae Solberg. He is vice president of the Oslo Conservatives and was the party’s municipal council leader candidate in local elections.

Lae Solberg first referred to several times that Berg should have been informed about crimes at the agency, only in April 2018. She then claimed that this information was withheld from the city hall for a long time.

Lae Solberg noted, among other things, that Lan Marie Berg was informed in February 2019, as NRK has mentioned, that there had been 730 crimes at the agency in 2017 and 2018.

– Only after the municipal elections does the information come to light, the extent of the seriousness of what happened, said Lae Solberg before asking her question:

– Why from Spring 2018 to Fall 2019 did you keep crucial information on your chest with a very high severity?

Lan Marie Berg categorically denied that this was the case. During the hearing, she said that the first reports she received about the problems were followed by assurances that the underlying agency had implemented measures and had control. Some of the information he received was also not guaranteed of quality, he explained.

It also pointed out that it informed the City Council on April 10, 2019 that it had initiated an external investigation into the work of the Energy Recycling Agency in terms of hiring, employment and working hours. This was several months before the municipal elections. He also noted that he had briefed the city council’s transportation and environment committee on challenges with the workplace environment law at the agency in 2018.

– My duty is to inform the City Council correctly and sufficiently about important problems or deviations in my agencies. At the same time, we must ensure that alerts are handled correctly and carefully, and that potential violations are investigated without interruption. I firmly believe that I have done so in this case.

Lae Solberg followed up and wondered if the city would have done something different in the future to keep the city informed.

– I have informed the council sufficiently and correctly in this case about deviations and major problems in my agencies, and that good information has been passed on the ownership of the information that I could share at that time, Berg replied.

Thousands of crimes in the municipality of Oslo

The agency has been investigated by the auditing firm PwC. The audit firm’s report is essential for the consultation. PwC investigated 47 external acquisitions and found defects in 27 of them. Only 1 of the 16 management positions was publicly advertised.

– The challenge here is that there is a lack of documentation, which makes it impossible to verify if there have been real reasons for it and if the assessments that must be made according to the regulations have been made. One can ask questions about whether the underlying processes are satisfactory and legitimate, all the time it cannot be confirmed, said Marianne Pilgaard of PwC at the hearing.

He denied that they have found documentation that the appointments were ordered from the City Council’s Department of the Environment and Transport. No infidelity or corruption breach has been found. But PwC also cannot categorically deny that this has occurred.

– No impression of corruption

KrF’s Espen Andreas Halse addressed whether investigators could rule out camaraderie or corruption. They told him that the lack of documentation constitutes a risk. At the same time, PwC has not conducted investigations to refute or confirm whether the individuals have been branded or whether there is corruption or camaraderie behind the appointments.

– Then we have no reason to say it exists. In general, it can be said that when one does not know, it is a risk. But I don’t get the impression that this is what has happened here, Pilgaard said.

The PWC investigator was also clear that the former directors of the agency were clear that they themselves should handle the infractions of the Work Environment Law and not take it to the city hall.

– Serious findings

During the hearing, both the opposition and the position worried about the seriousness of the case, in their own way.

For Energy Recycling Agencies, PCW has found 807 violations of working time regulations.

– When you have 807 violations of working time regulations, it’s serious, Pilgaard said.

– What is the severity of the totality of what you have revealed? asked Hallstein Bjercke of the Liberal Party.

– It is clear that we believe that it is serious that an agency has so many deviations in key areas of its operations. And then I think it’s important that there has been a change from February 2019 to today. It has been a year and a half. But hey, I mean these are serious findings. But it is not in the class of other cases that we have seen.