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At a convention of the Association of Romania's Communes on Monday, Senate Chairman Calin Popescu-Tariceanu campaigned for local administration pay continuing to increase.
"I was overjoyed that we were able to implement the decision we had supported during the election campaign of increasing pay for the local administration employees. As you can see, a witch hunt has been going on for years now in Romania. Very many mayors have had to put up with extremely hard investigations that tarnished their public image and prevented them from working. In the end, very many of them proved innocent. Yet they had to put up with this marching before television cameras that has been going on for years and that seems to be designed to humiliate people and destroy Romania's elites. Well, everybody has been vocal about corruption. (...) Everybody is concerned with the effects of corruption. Nobody talks about the causes of corruption in Romania. I believe that if we want high quality public administration, with well-trained people, we cannot imagine giving them paltry pay and expecting high performance in exchange," said Tariceanu.
He added that pay increases will lead to best specialists being drawn to the public administration.
"Not even under communism was the idea [of high performance against modest pay] operational. There has to be a direct connection between pay levels and administration quality. (...) I am glad to see that the government headed by Mr Grindeanu has made this decision based on the political programme the Social Democratic Party- Alliance of Democrats and Liberals (PSD-ALDE) alliance competed on in the election. I hope the secondary effect (...) will be falling corruption in Romania. I believe pay level should continue to increase in order to become motivating, stimulating, so that the best specialists may be won over to work alongside you to the benefit of the people," said Tariceanu.
