The head of Zermatt revealed how much it cost to print this year’s tests for entrance exams and matriculation exams – Nauzal

On Thursday, the director of Cermat, Miroslav Krejčí, announced this year’s amount.

The amount for the production of the tests is budgeted for 12 months from September 2022, from when the organization takes care of the printing and distribution of the test materials itself, the director said. According to him, the highest costs are incurred from January to March, when the tests are printed.

The price includes, among other things, the costs of purchasing paper, staples, toners, servicing the necessary equipment, as well as the costs of purchasing Fuji printers, including their servicing, he said. At the same time, Cermat has not yet printed the tests on these new printers, it wants to use them to print materials for the matriculation exams in September.

Test documents for exams in the spring months were printed on Konica Minolta printers, but not in cooperation with the company of the same name.

The distribution of tests, including the rental of warehouses, cost 1.95 million crowns this year, and the distribution of tests for the autumn matriculation exams should cost an estimated half a million crowns, the director of Cermat said now.

Krejčí compared the current costs of printing tests with the possible costs that would arise if the tests continued to be created in cooperation with Konica Minolta. If the contract were to continue after October 1, 2022, more would be paid for this year’s tests, according to Cermat’s director.

“If we were to continue with this contract, under the same conditions as we had with Konica Minolta, for example, the previous four years, we would pay 27.5 million crowns including tax for this year’s test production,” he said.

According to him, Konica Minolta also paid a support fee for printing software in the amount of three million crowns, which Cermat does not have to pay now.

The CEO of Konica Minolta Business Solutions Czech Pavel Čurda said that he would not comment on the amounts mentioned by Krejčí.

“Konica Minolta does not want and cannot comment on Cermat’s internal calculations without more detailed knowledge of the initial data. During the period of validity of the contract between Cermat and Konica Minolta, a completely different level of service, services and guarantees was required, which Konica Minolta has always fulfilled without reservation within the framework of the contractual relationship,” he said.

Even Krejčí agrees that the contract with Konica Minolta used to have a different level of service. “However, the services of the new technology service providers in 2023 are at a significantly higher level, including lower response times and repair times than Konica Minolta,” he said.

For example, there used to be a time limit of eight hours for fixing a fault on the printer, but now, according to the contract with the supplier, the repair must be ensured within four hours, informed the director of Cermat.

According to its spokeswoman Aneta Lednová, the Ministry of Education found 29 irregularities in Zermatt’s public contracts last year. The inspection also confirmed errors in relation to the Konica Minolta company, the ministry said earlier in a press release.

According to Čurda’s statement at the time, the company, in cooperation with Zermatt, ensured operation exactly according to the instructions of the Ministry of Education and Culture. According to Lednová, the office’s inspection confirmed the earlier findings of the Ministry of Finance.

Last May, the then Minister of Education Petr Gazdík (STAN) dismissed the director of Cermat, Michaela Kleňhová, because of the deficiencies pointed out by the Ministry of Finance.