State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman participated today (17.1.23) in the Environment 2050 conference, which was held in Tel Aviv. During his speech, he strongly criticized the behavior of Israeli governments in encouraging public sector employees to use their private vehicle, while on the other hand it invests in the paving of public transport lanes.
According to him, "The development of public transport is also important from the aspect of pollution reduction and climate protection. A report that we published about two months ago showed that absurdly, while the Israeli government is paving public transport lanes, its other hand is encouraging the use of private vehicles. This is a classic example of behavior where the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.
The State is the largest employer in the economy. Several thousand State employees make their way to work every morning and one would have expected that the State would encourage travel by public transport. According to data from the Ministry of Finance, 80 percent of government ministry employees and 40 percent of local authority employees are eligible for reimbursement of vehicle expenses. The absurd thing is that the labor agreements incentivize the purchase of private vehicles. The reason is simple: only a person who owns a vehicle is eligible for the reimbursement of vehicle expenses and therefore it is not worth his while to travel by public transport. In this way, the State is sabotaging its own efforts to reduce the use of private vehicles.
I call upon the Minister of Finance to convert the vehicle maintenance expenses reimbursement into the payment of salary, within the framework of the upcoming wage agreements. Thus, according to estimates calculated by the Bank of Israel, the number of vehicles in branches whose employees are eligible for reimbursement of expenses, will be reduced by about 20,000 vehicles, mainly in the larger cities and in particular in Jerusalem".
In the matter of the funds in the Maintenance of Cleanliness Fund, the Comptroller said that: "The report which we published showed that as of December 2020, surplus funds had accumulated in the Fund in the sum of approximately NIS 3.2 billion, out of which NIS 1.66 billion had been transferred to the State Treasury, and according to our calculations the Fund lost nearly NIS 1 billion during 2011-2020 as a result of its failure to invest its funds. That is to say - there are sources, and they are not being utilized. I call upon the government to henceforth utilize the Fund's funds to take action in the field of the environmental protection and thereby fulfill its purpose and prevent the use of funds for other purposes".
The Comptroller announced that in preparation for the Climate Change Conference in Abu Dhabi he would publish a follow-up report on the subject of climate change. Furthermore, he said, that in his capacity as Deputy President of EUROSAI, he is initiating a special session for state comptrollers, within the framework of the conference in Abu Dhabi, sponsored by the European Union's audit institution. The Comptroller mentioned that: "The report we published showed that the new target for renewable energy for 2030 as presented by Israel was just 30% - the lowest target of the OECD countries which was between 45%-100%; and that the Ministry of Energy had not set a target for renewable energies for 2050. Accordingly, Israel is not taking the lead in setting targets for the reduction of greenhouse gases as required by the Paris Agreement".
In conclusion, he said that: "Splitting up the government treatment of climate change among dozens of government ministries leads to barriers and multiple conflicts between the ministries - both in formulating the targets and in achieving them".