The amalgamation of localities is an extremely necessary process in Moldova, said Veaceslav Ioniță, expert of the Institute for Development and Social Initiatives “Viitorul”. According to him, more functionaries than inhabitants will be in small villages soon and localities’ funds go to maintain the staff of mayor’s offices, not to develop settlement. The amalgamation will solve this problem, IPN reports.

The expert said that the voluntary amalgamation of localities, which is a concept that the Government aims to implement after the local elections of this autumn during the next four years, is designed to encourage the mayor’s offices, especially the small ones, to unite into a commune so as to save financial resources for investment at the local level. The Government will allocate about 250 million lei to amalgamated village and towns to help them develop.

According to him, in the country there are at most 2.2 million citizens. During three years, the negative population growth has been the most dramatic. External migration, internal migration, temporary migration and the reduction in the size of population led to a shortage of staff at mayor’s offices. We have about 500 villages where the population is under 1,000 people. The population decline is an administrative pressure.

In the case of amalgamation, the number of functionaries will decrease by 50%, from 3.8 persons at present to 2.6 personas after amalgamation. The smaller is the mayor’s office, the greater is the financial and administrative pressure and the money goes to maintain the administrative staff instead of making investments at the local level.

The bill on the voluntary amalgamation of the administrative-territorial units was given a first reading by Parliament. This provides that two or more administrative-territorial units of the first level (villages/communes and towns/municipalities) will voluntarily unite based on the decision of local councils, while the total population should be of minimum 3,000 people.