What 976,270 lei repaired at the high school in Măcărești, and who carried out the works

Between 2023 and 2026, Ungheni District Council allocated 976,800 lei to the building of the «Elada» Theoretical High School in the village of Măcărești. Of that, 976,270 lei was spent. The money paid for the façade, 68 radiators, the outdoor heating pipes, the repair of one wall, the canteen’s sewerage and the joinery in the bathroom and toilet, and the jobs were carried out by five contractors.

The allocation decisions, published in the State Register of Local Acts, say only how much was approved. Who carried out the work and how much was actually paid becomes visible only in the acceptance certificates — the documents signed by the builder and the client at the end of a job. Most also contain the cost estimate, that is the itemised list of materials, labour and expenses that make up the price. Eight such documents reached the newsroom on 4 August, from the school’s management, and on 6 August, from the District Council.

The «Elada» High School was built, according to the locality entry in the moldovenii.md encyclopaedia, with the support of a grant offered by Bartholomew I, Patriarch of Constantinople, and has been running, according to several local sources, since 2007. In the 2025/26 school year it had 327 pupils, of whom 39 were in the upper-secondary cycle — 19 in grades X and XI and 20 in grade XII.

The subject entered public attention on 21 July, when the president of the district, Dionisie Ternovschi, published a clip filmed in the school’s yard, saying that the district traditionally allocates money for current repairs to educational institutions. The newsroom then wrote about the allocations in the District Council’s decisions and asked for the documents showing what each allocation had bought.

The money in the district component is public money, and those who pay it have a right to know what it bought. Acceptance documents are not published in the State Register of Local Acts, as the decisions are — they can be obtained on request, under Law 148/2023 on access to information of public interest.

Where the money comes from

The works were paid for from the district component — the part of the district budget that councillors distribute, on request, to the institutions under their authority. The distribution is made on the proposal of a working group that prioritises schools’ requests, under point 5 of the Regulation on the distribution and use of financial means from the component of the administrative-territorial unit, annex no. 2 to Government Decision no. 868/2014. The resulting list is voted on by the district councillors.

Every allocation carries, in the decision, a written object and a sum — for instance «for the repair of the building’s façade», 270,000 lei. For 2024, both institutions reported that the school received no allocations. In the four district-component decisions of that year the school appears once, with 547,100 lei — under staff costs, not works.

Where the Măcărești high school stands against the rest of the district

The 976,800 lei received over four years do not make the Măcărești high school a special case. In the decision of May 2026, by which the District Council distributed 12.5 million lei, the largest sum for a single job — 2 million lei — went to the «Ion Creangă» Theoretical High School in the municipality of Ungheni, for the thermal insulation of the building. That is more than double everything the Măcărești building has received since 2023.

From the same decision, the Todirești school received 783,300 lei for the repair of the assembly hall, the Bumbăta school 482,000 for landscaping the grounds, and the «Gaudeamus» school in Petrești 348,900 for the roof. The two allocations to the Măcărești high school from the same sitting — 165,000 lei for a wall and 36,300 for the canteen’s sewerage — are among the smallest of the 12 works financed by that decision.

The sums differ according to the type and scale of the work requested — the thermal insulation of a whole building costs on a different order than the repair of a single wall — and the allocations follow the applications submitted by each institution.

The Măcărești high school came to the newsroom’s attention because the president of the district chose it as a public example for the repairs carried out across the district. The acceptance documents show how an allocation from the district component is actually spent — not that this institution is an exception.

What was repaired and who carried out the work

The eight documents cover seven jobs, carried out between November 2023 and July 2026.

Added up by contractor, the largest sums went to SRL Aedificator — 404,768 lei, that is 41.5% of everything spent — followed by S.C. «Calax & Co» SRL with 265,479 lei and SRL Viralion with 239,933 lei. The canteen’s sewerage was done by ÎM «Apă-Ungheni», the municipal water and sewerage enterprise.

The 68 radiators installed by SRL Viralion come from two decisions: the one of August 2025 and the one of November. The August decision provided for 40 radiators; the documents record 42, installed within the same monetary limit, in two certificates on the same invoice. All are monobloc steel radiators of 500×1400 mm, entered in the cost estimate at 1,500 lei apiece.

How much was allocated and how much was spent

None of the six allocations was exceeded. In every case the sum spent comes very close to the one approved, and in four out of six the remaining difference is under 25 lei.

The explanation is technical and ordinary in construction: the cost estimate is drawn up within the limit of the available sum, and the quantities are adjusted to the budget.

The money approved for the façade also covered joinery in the bathroom

The largest allocation, that of October 2023, was approved «for the repair of the building’s façade» — 270,000 lei. Two payments came out of it, to two contractors.

The façade cost 239,776 lei and was carried out by SRL Aedificator in November 2023. The second payment, of 29,800 lei, went to S.C. «DANCOMPLAST» SRL, and the completion certificate has a different object: «joinery replacement services» (servicii de schimbare a timplariei), «in the bathroom and toilet» (In baie si veceu).

The head of the school, Maria Antoniuc, explained that the money arrives allocated to a budget line item — the expenditure category the sum falls under, here repairs — and that «we cannot direct it to another line item, only use it in repairs». The façade repair cost less than the allocation, she says, and the remainder was used «where it was needed».

The figures follow exactly this sequence: out of the 270,000 lei, the façade consumed 239,776, leaving 30,224 lei, and the joinery cost 29,800.

An act permitting the shift was not indicated by the school’s management, to which the question was addressed. From the documents obtained it cannot be established whether the shift was permitted — the rule rests with the District Council, which issued the decision.

The other documents, too, carry titles that do not repeat the decision word for word: the radiators appear under «reconstruction of the standalone heating system» (reconstructie a sistemei autonome de incalzire), and the wall repaired in 2026 under «façade repair» (reparatie a fatadei). There, however, the object remains the same — radiators are the heating system, and a plastered exterior wall is part of the façade. With the joinery, the object is different.

What a square metre cost, in 2023 and in 2026

The two works carried out by SRL Aedificator can be compared directly, because they use the same cost-estimate items — «Gleta» primer, fibreglass matting, interior plaster of 5 mm and exterior «TINC» plaster of 2–3 mm, tubular metal scaffolding.

In November 2023, the façade cost 239,776 lei for 249.11 square metres, that is 962.53 lei per square metre. In July 2026, the work cost 164,992 lei for 159.80 square metres, that is 1032.49 lei per square metre — 7.3% more, two years and eight months later.

More than two thirds of the difference comes from a single item: the scaffolding. Both documents provide for the same immobilisation period, 25 days, and the total cost of the scaffolding fell by 10%, from 18,281 to 16,406 lei. The surface, however, fell by more — by 36% — so the estimate price of the scaffolding, before taxes and indirect costs, rose from 73.39 to 102.67 lei per square metre. Without that item, the price per square metre of the work rises by 2.4%.

For comparison, prices for construction and assembly works in the Republic of Moldova rose by 2.6% in 2024 and by 0.7% in 2025 against the previous year, and in the first quarter of 2026 by a further 1.1% against the same period last year. Chained together, the National Bureau of Statistics indices give about 4.5% over this interval — above the 2.4% rise that remains once the scaffolding is removed, but below the 7.3% overall.

What the documents do not show

Both institutions give the same award criterion: «lowest price». The number of bids examined for each job was not disclosed even on request, and the guarantee period does not appear in any of the eight documents.

The documents provided are acceptance certificates and completion certificates, not procurement files: they show what was carried out and how much was paid, not how the contractor was chosen. Whether the works went through the electronic public procurement system could not be established.

Note. The two replies — the school’s and the District Council’s — point to the same eight payments, the same invoice numbers and the same contractors, but they are not sources independent of one another: the District Council’s letter was drafted, according to the note in its footer, by the Ungheni Education Directorate and by the school’s management. The attached documents, five of which bear the contractor’s electronic signature, remain evidence in their own right. In the list of economic operators in the District Council’s reply, four of the five contractors appear; S.C. «Calax & Co» SRL, to which the same document attributes 265,479 lei, is not included. The sums paid are rounded to the leu; the exact figures, with bani, are in the acceptance certificates.