Mayor’s administrations should take over social assistance matters, because they know best what people need, says Alexandru Bujorean, vice president of the Local Authorities Congress (CALM) and also mayor of Leova.

During a talk show on Vocea Basarabiei, Bujorean argued that the social protection sector needs to be decentralized, so that mayor’s administrations get the powers and the funds needed to help people directly.

“This service, obviously, must be transferred over to the town halls, but not only as an additional item of subject-matter jurisdiction, but with the corresponding financial coverage as well. I’ll give you an example. In December, the Social Assistance Agency at the central level came up with these lists for beneficiaries of 4,900 lei lump-sum payouts, based on God knows what criteria. We didn’t understand the criteria either. So, these lists arrived, and I countersigned on them as mayor. But later, in February, other lists arrived, this time around with the request for the mayor’s offices and the territorial commissions to select only a part of the beneficiaries. How can you take a list of people, most of whom are disabled or on low incomes, and start striking off? Based on what criteria?”, Bujorean asked rhetorically.

According to the Leova mayor, the promised decentralization of social services is not happening, but people continue to turn to the town halls for help, even if the funds are allocated at the central level.

“Social protection is not within the authority of the mayor’s office, but people come to the town halls only because, probably, social workers or the social assistance departments are mostly located in the town halls, in order to directly serve the population. But the mayor does not have the powers to manage these processes or provide material aid. Social protection is within the central government’s exclusive jurisdiction even if there were promises in the past that it would be somehow decentralized and delegated to the local administrations of first level, this has not happened so far”, added Bujorean.

Recently, the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection launched the RESTART reform, which provides for the creation of 9 Territorial Social Assistance Agencies, administered by the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection. They will coordinate the activity of the district social assistance departments.