Healthcare Minister Venko Filipce informed today that the new Skopje clinic center will be built in the western Gjorce Petrov suburb of the city. The clinic was supposed to be built as a major expansion wing of the existing Mother Teresa clinic in downtown Skopje, and work was about to begin after technical support and investments were lined up, but it was scrapped with the removal of the VMRO-DPMNE Government and the coming of the SDSM led Government into office.

We evaluated three locations, in Karpos, Gjorce Petrov and near the Petrovec airport. A team of experts came to the conclusion that Gjorce Petrov is the ideal location, and that it would be easiest to prepare the paperwork with least cost, given that all the land there is state owned, Filipce said.

The Ministry announced it plans to break ground on the badly needed new clinic in 2019, but officials who were involved with the previous project insist that it’s impossible. Former Transportation Minister Vlado Misajlovski said that chances that this complicated investment will begin this year are 0.

The level of deceit and incompetence in SDSM is unbelievable! You spent a year looking for a new site, and still there is no progress in the municipal spatial plan. You lie that you have prepared the construction plans. It will take at least six months after the spatial plan is finished to even begin the international bidding procedure for the new construction, a procedure which itself will take a year. Unless of course, you intend to amend the law and make it a no-bid contract, which has become the usual option for this Government. In short, you are incompetent!, Misajlovski wrote in an angry Facebook post, detailing the latest failure of the sprawling Ministry.

The Skopje clinics are main healthcare providers in Macedonia, with citizens from across the country coming daily to receive specialist care and treatment. This causes often chaotic scenes and a scramble over parking or getting to the needed specialist. As a portion of Kosovo also relies on the Macedonian healthcare system, it’s believed that this also played a role in choosing the next site of the clinic, close to the A2 highway north of Skopje which is easily accessible from the Blace border crossing with Kosovo.