Podgorica, (MINA) - The government has no intention of optimizing and professionalizing public administration, and the constant increase in the number of employees at both central and local level indicates that the state is still a safe haven for party-affiliated personnel, the Center for Democratic Transition (CDT) said.

CDT Deputy Executive Director Milena Gvozdenovic said that Montenegro has an excessive number of public administration workers, and that this number is continuously growing.

She pointed to record allocations for gross wages,planned in the next year’s darft budget, in the amount of EUR 726 million.

“Unfortunately, this will not be the result, as it is claimed in the public, of the state’s “development”, but rather the parties’ need to place as many of their people as possible within the public administration”, stated Gvozdenovic.

She said that, according to the latest data from the Ministry of Finance from September, 54,841 people work in the public administration, of which 47,584 are employed at the central level, and 7,257 at the local level.

“That represents an overall increase of 4,655 employees compared to December 2020”, said Gvozdenovic.

Those figures, according to her, are not final, as the number of employees in companies majority-owned by the state and municipalities is not known.

Gvozdenović pointed out that it is paradoxical that Montenegro still lacks sufficient professional and institutional capacity to implement reforms and meet European obligations, despite the growing number of employees, which is also emphasized by the European Commission.

It is stated that the process of public administration optimization would require the preparation of comprehensive functional analyzes that will identify shortages or excess of employees across public administration, in order to plan organizational, personnel and other changes and prepare plans and fair conditions to achieve optimal number of employees.

“However, the Public Administration Reform Strategy itself and accompanying reports tell us that it is unlikely that such analyzes will be prepared by the end of this strategic cycle, even though they were planned for the education and health sectors”, said Gvozdenovic.