Scientists of NANBIOSIS in the University of Zaragoza participated in the assembly held las week that put on the table the risks of applying rules in an incoherent way and without taking into account the reality of the work that researchers develop. The Spanish public contrat law prevents the University to spend more than 15,000 euros per provider per year, which complicates the purchases of material. The scientists ask that this legislation not be applied
More than three hundred researchers have signed a manifesto in which they denounce that some provisions of the new Spanish law on public contracts prevent them from acquiring normally the material they need for their work. A law that originally aimed to fight corruption is criticizes by scientists becxause of it is causing a serious situation of inoperativeness and inefficiency. The main problem at this time is that the new regulation applies the limit of expenditure per provider of 15,000 euros per year without the need to process a public tender to the University as a whole (as to any public entity), prevoiusly this limit appliied to each research group but the amount is obviously insignificant for all the research groups of a University.
The professor of the Faculty of Medicine, Iñaki Ochoa,Researcher at NANBIOSIS Unit 13 advocates changing the rule that limits public contracts by not considering it “something reasonable”. As part of the Applied Mechanics and Bioengineering group of the Aragón Engineering Research Institute (I3A), he defended the need to protest to change things: “If I need a reagent to take samples in a patient that is going to be operated in a few weeks, I can wait two months until your purchase is authorized », alert. In your specific case, when working in the analysis of brain tumors, the opportunities to access surgeries are limited.
Ochoa assumes that research has always been “complicated,” both because of lack of funding and lack of resources. But in this case he believes that the new obstacles are completely excessive