The mayor of Craiova, the social democrat Olguţa Vasilescu, declared on Wednesday that in the draft of the new salary law there is no longer any "brake" in the public administration and it could lead to a situation where city hall employees have higher incomes than mayors.
"I requested the reintroduction of the brake on salaries in local public administration and to be more precise - until now, through the previous law, through the salary law, it was not possible for any civil servant from a City Hall, for example, or from a County Council to exceed the salary of the deputy mayor or vice-president of the County Council. This worked very well, because, no matter how much the increases had gone, let's say, there was this brake in which, practically, the employee was capped. Now, under the new version, this brake disappears, conditions in which if, for example, the increase for European funds for mayors decreases and increases for employees, we will find ourselves again in the situation we had in 2017, when over half of the employees in a City Hall had a salary income higher than that of the mayor. This is exactly what was tried to be corrected through the salary law as it was done in 2017," explained Vasilescu, at the Ministry of Labor, where he participated in debates on the new salary law, agerpres reports.
She added that, according to her calculations, the salaries of local public administration employees are increasing "a lot", despite the fact that the mayors did not want this.
"I'll give you the calculation I have from Craiova City Hall. Until now, payroll expenses were 53,400,000, now they go up to 66,750,000. That means an increase of 13,000,000 lei, over 2,000,000 euros, which we would have to pay extra for employee salaries, given that the mayor's salary income decreases by 500 lei. That is, it is clear that there is an irregularity in this payroll law, and we have asked for it to be corrected so that we can reach a situation where there is at least equity," the mayor said.
The mayor of Craiova also said that from discussions held at the ministry, he understood that the allowances of dignitaries would increase in stages until 2031.
"We must be very attentive to all the discussions that take place in the public space and look closely at what is happening, because it is possible that what we want, namely that the salaries of dignitaries, for example, decrease, under the conditions in which they have been capped from 2018 until now, we may find ourselves in a situation in which even the doorman exceeds the minister in the ministry. (...) And I tell you that it does not suit me as mayor to increase salaries in the City Hall by over 2 million euros, under the conditions in which until now we have been told that we must tighten our belts, that everyone must tighten their belts, that in the local public administration the salaries are already very high and here we are, under this law, we must find a source of financing of over 2 million euros to be able to cover these increases," Olguta Vasilescu said.
