Gwangju Seo-gu Outsourced Operation 'Yua Sup' Careless Administrative Procedures Under Scrutiny

2015~2017 Direct Management · From 2018 Outsourced to Private Companies

Despite Forest Service Guideline Changes to 'Establish Own Budget,' No Action Taken

No Contract Review and Preliminary Committee Member Selection Not Followed

Seo-gu, Gwangju Metropolitan City, which operates the ‘Early Childhood Forest Experience Center’ through private consignment, has come under scrutiny for lax administration after it was confirmed that proper procedures were not followed for several years during the selection process of the consignment company.

According to Seo-gu on the 21st, since 2015, the district has been operating an early childhood forest program in accordance with Article 12 of the Act on the Promotion of Forest Education, providing quality forest experience and education opportunities where young children can freely play in the forest and develop character and creativity through sensory experiences with nature.

Screenshot of the Gwangju Seo-gu homepage.

Until 2017, Seo-gu directly managed the program, but following guidelines issued by the Korea Forest Service to promote specialized forest welfare businesses, the operation was converted to consignment management starting in 2018.

However, proper procedures related to the consignment contracts were not followed.

All contracts in Seo-gu must be processed by the accounting department, which is the contracting department, according to the ordinance. Only small-scale contracts of about 2 million KRW may be handled by the responsible department. However, for the Early Childhood Forest program, contracts amounting to approximately 88 million KRW in 2018, 124 million KRW in 2019, 127.5 million KRW in 2020, 77.026 million KRW in 2021, 105 million KRW in 2022, and 110 million KRW in 2023 were handled by the responsible department instead of the accounting department, which should have naturally managed them.

Additionally, regarding budget allocation, the ‘Forest Education Operation Project Guidelines’ were revised in 2020, but Seo-gu ignored these guidelines and operated arbitrarily.

Until 2019, the budget was allocated as office management expenses and operated through public recruitment (private consignment), but in 2020, the guidelines changed to allocate the budget as event operation expenses instead of office management expenses. However, Seo-gu continued to allocate the budget as office management expenses for three years from 2021 to this year, contrary to the revised guidelines.

As a result, mandatory contract reviews were not conducted and contracts passed without scrutiny. According to the ‘Seo-gu Contract Review Work Rules,’ contract reviews must be conducted for construction projects estimated at 50 million KRW or more, service contracts estimated at 20 million KRW or more, and goods contracts estimated at 10 million KRW or more.

However, since the program continued to be operated as a private consignment not subject to contract review, no contract reviews were conducted.

The selection process for the consignment company also lacked smooth administration.

The Korea Forest Service ordinance stipulates that three times the number of committee members must be selected as preliminary candidates for the selection committee. Until 2020, the number of committee members was five, so 15 preliminary candidates should have been selected, and from 2021, for projects exceeding 100 million KRW, seven committee members must be appointed, requiring 21 preliminary candidates. However, Seo-gu only selected five and seven committee members respectively.

Given these circumstances, there are opinions both inside and outside the district suggesting that the process may have been manipulated to favor certain companies.

In response, a Seo-gu official explained, “Since it was the early stage of the project, many procedural omissions seem to have occurred,” and added, “In the first year of the public recruitment in 2018, two companies applied, but from then on, only one company applied each year, so there was no intentional omission to favor a particular company.”

The official further stated, “The fact that contracts were handled by the responsible department instead of the accounting department and the budget allocation was not smooth seems to be due to mistakes as this was the first time contracting with private companies,” and added, “We will thoroughly review everything from the beginning and correct any problems.”

Honam Reporting Headquarters, Reporter Shin Dong-ho yjm3070@asiae.co.kr

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.