A letter from MSU scientists was sent to the rector

On February 10, a letter from scientists about the collapse of procurement at Moscow State University, which was published in the last issue of TRV, was handed over to the rector. In two weeks, 157 doctors and 243 candidates of science signed it, 252 of whom are heads of various grants.

Meanwhile, the procurement confusion continues. In one of the divisions of Moscow State University, the following message was sent to all grant managers on February 9:

“By February 16, you need to submit:

1. Tech. assignments for goods not purchased from <company name> (electronically to my mail), in accordance with your requests.

2. 3 commercial offers or 3 invoices for each product for market analysis (to justify the purchase price) in printed form - to the office.

3. It is necessary to indicate the grant number for each purchase, the person responsible and his telephone number.”

Considering that, say, the winners of the RFBR competitions have not yet been announced, this requirement looks, to put it mildly, funny. The obvious impossibility of predicting months in advance the need for every reagent or every minor repair, as well as the amount of work required to conduct a “market analysis,” was written in that very letter.

In a word, while the rector’s office and faculty administrations are figuring out who should do what, the situation with conducting research and workshops is becoming more complicated literally every day, sometimes irreversibly. Employees of purchasing departments quit, explaining this by the inability to cope with the increased volume of work by an order of magnitude. And the company mentioned in the first paragraph of the message, having received an unexpected gift and becoming a monopolist, is slowly raising prices...

M.G.