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Photo: Anders Wiklund / TT
Irene Svenonius (M) during a press conference with the Stockholm region about the coronavirus. Stock Photography.
The Stockholm region has invested in a gift fund for those who want to support healthcare in the crown crisis.
A decision that is being challenged by Giva Sweden, the industry organization for safe donation.
“It can be said that they have acted hastily without thinking of alternatives or consequences,” said Secretary General Charlotte Rydh.
An exception to dealing with the pressure that exists to receive gifts of money during the crown pandemic. This is Irene Svenonius (M), President of the Stockholm Regional Board, explaining the Stockholm Region’s investment in a gift fund.
But not everyone agrees that this is the right path for a publicly funded business.
– We don’t criticize you trying, but it turns out to be the wrong way. It is our tax money that will finance the Stockholm Region and, if people want to do more, it will be channeled in other ways into the system we have in Sweden, says Charlotte Rydh, secretary general of Giva Sweden.
“Next step”
Rydh also questions how the Stockholm region will handle the amounts coming in through Swish and bank wire, as well as whether the county council has the right structures and what the money should really be used for.
– How do you think about the next step? Is it that we should let the gifts be a surcharge on the tax or should we think backwards? You end up in a border country, between taxes and gifts, she says.
– If the Stockholm Region says that “we believe it is our mission to raise money and take care of it”, then we should discuss with politicians and decision-makers how to analyze future public sector financing.
TT: How will the Stockholm region ensure internal control, that money ends up in the right places?
– I am absolutely sure that the public system has good control over its finances and has good routines in general. But I don’t think you have sat and thought: How should we handle this money in relation to taxes?
“Dedicated staff”
However, the Stockholm region, through Magnus Nelin, strategic communication and the press, states otherwise and writes in an email to TT that the money will be managed in a liquidity account and will be separated from ordinary operations.
“There are dedicated staff in the finance and finance department centrally who handle the transactions that go into the liquidity account,” he writes.
“The gifts will be transferred to care, for example to a hospital based on the reported and known costs incurred with respect to covid-19.”
Nelin also writes that when the fund is to be audited by auditors, it means an equivalent to “the regulations that regular collection organizations obey according to Swedish collection control regulations.”
Charlotte Rydh:
– It is not a concern that they should not have control over gift funds, but it is the basic system we have in Sweden, where public operations are generally not financed by gift money, he says.
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