On June 14, the citizens of Moldova will vote the new local administration. IPN News Agency set the goal to determine how the local public authorities coped during the current term that is coming to an end. Experts, opinion leaders and representatives of civil society from different settlements will assess the activity of the local authorities of the country’s districts and municipalities. IPN series: Anenii Noi district
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Anenii Noi district has 45 settlements and 26 mayor’s offices. The total population of the district is over 80,000.
The rural settlements of our country, including those of Anenii Noi district, have a poorly developed road infrastructure, with access difficulties in parts, and their merging would not produce results. The powers of the local authorities should be reviewed and the financial instruments should be redistributed from the center to the periphery so as to make sure that the settlements are viable, said the editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Adevarul de Anenii Noi” (“Truth of Anenii Noi”) Octavian Zelinski, who heads the public association “ Astra-Anenii Noi”. According to him, the authorities now do not have such a preoccupation and therefore we have what we have – villages without population, without economy and without prospects. The mere focusing on the territorial-administrative reform will lead to nowhere.
Octavian Zelinski said that a settlement in Anenii Noi district has about 11,000 inhabitants, the other settlements have about 5,000 residents, but there are also villages with a population of under 2,000. These small villages are poorly developed and have a low number of economic entities and of students. The situation can be improved in the case of an administrative reform, but each case should be discussed apart.
The journalist considers a radical improvement in the development of villages will be witnessed in 5-10 years even if there are successful projects implemented at local level now. The internal budget resources of the country do not allow staging a ‘revolution’ to stimulate rural development, while those several billion lei that comes to the country as grants and loans from abroad is sufficient only for carrying out particular activities planned by the active mayor’s offices, not yet for changing radically the state of affairs.
“Simple calculations show that the about 10,000 km of national roads of the country need at least 240 billion lei for being completely asphalted. This is an enormous sum for Moldova. I do not speak about the internal, communal roads, which should be the preoccupation of the local authorities. Another calculation: a village with 3,600 – 4,000 residents can be provided with running water and sewerage at a cost of minimum 15 million lei. I refer to Serpeni village of our district, where such a project is being implemented. In our country, minimum 60% of the about 900 villages are not supplied with water. As to sewerage, not even the district centers have such a system. Hundreds of billions of lei is needed for creating sewerage systems and no project can offer such money to Moldova over the next 5-10 or even 20 years,” stated Octavian Zelinski.
He also said that in general there were not many successful projects at local and district levels. In Anenii Noi, there are mayor’s offices that implemented important projects in the settlement, like those of Calfa and Serpeni. Over the last few years, these managed to attract significant water supply and sewerage, energy efficiency and other types of projects. There are also the mayor’s offices of Roscani and Puhaceni-Delacau, where, owing to the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the irrigation systems destroyed in the post-Soviet period were restored.
The head of the public association “Astra-Anenii Noi” reiterated that as long as the funds are insufficient and the foreign projects provide at most €50,000-100,000 per settlement, we cannot be yet optimistic. The European structural funds, which represent real money, will become generally accessible only after the country submits an application to join the EU. In the current conditions, this is something implausible. The local development should be the stake of the local elections in all the districts.
Elena Nistor, IPN
