The support of the community and sufficient financing either from the state budget or from foreign projects are the main factors that can help the mayors and councilors elected on November 5 for a four-year term to work efficiently, mayor of Sadaclia village of  Basarabeasca district stated in a public debate hosted by IPN.

“First of all, I want to say that when I ran for mayor for the first time, I ran as an independent candidate. I didn’t know about the political color as I wasn’t interested in this. I can say that it was a difficult tenure as it is not at all easy when you don’t have a majority in the council and not all the projects and proposals are approved. During the second term in office that I won on November 5, I will be supported by a majority of councilors and will be able to continue with other projects, other views,” stated Ion Galeru.

According to him, the access to European projects is important, but in small localities, a shortage of persons skilled in writing projects and in implementing these is still experienced. Not many mayor’s offices employ experts in project writing. Those who can write projects, especially young people, went abroad as they are not motivated to remain at home given that the salaries in the local public administration are very small, paltry. With such salaries, not many young people stay in the Republic of Moldova to work,” stated the mayor.

Ion Galeru also said that the newly elected local officials must realize that involving young people in projects for obtaining financing to encourage the young people to work in localities is one of the possibilities of stopping the exodus of the youth.

“Better working conditions, decent living conditions and higher salaries are needed. There are a lot of projects that provide financing. To obtain them, we need specialists. We want to obtain appropriate financing regardless of the political color of the local elected officials,” stated Ion Galeru.

According to him, each government should adopt a correct attitude to the local elected officials and should treat them equally regardless of their political color. “Any ruling party will be replaced, but we remain. There are social, infrastructure and other kinds of problems at the local level. There is a lot of work to do,” noted the mayor.

The public debate entitled “Local elections in the context of European course” was staged by IPN News Agency in the framework of the project “Stimulation of discussion in the mass media about traditional particularities of local elections and the need for Europeanization” which is supported by Soros Foundation Moldova.