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: Soroca district
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Soroca district has 35 mayor’s offices for 69 settlements and a population of over 100,000.
Ion Babici, director of the Soroca-based Youth Resource Center “Dacia”, said that from financial viewpoint, the territorial-administrative organization of settlements is not efficient. The number of residents deceased significantly compared with the number of employees of mayor’s offices, which rose over the last eight years. The financial resources practically do not allow solving the infrastructure-related problems of the communities, while the mayors and the employees of mayor’s offices are only present in the settlement. They possess no real instrument for intervening and stimulating the development of the community or for solving the local problems.
The local public authorities achieved practically no visible results in the community development at economic, social and cultural levels. The mayor’s offices tried to please the ruling parties so as to access additional funds from the district budget and the North Development Agency. The financial resources collected in the district budgets cover only consumption costs and do not allow strategically developing the settlements of the district. Agriculture develops chaotically, with no real support from the authorities. The companies do not sufficiently contribute to forming the local budgets and work more in the underground economy at a time when these represent the main branch of the economy in Soroca district.
Considerable investments and regional projects are needed to modernize the technology and equipment in this sector and to help the economic entities penetrate new markets in the EU. The existent resources must be planned and foreign grants and investments must be attracted for implementing the strategy for developing Soroca town for 2015-2020, which envisions the transformation of the town into a center with touristic opportunities of European level. The infrastructure of the town must be reviewed. A priority is to motivate the young people not to leave. Therefore, the problems related to employment, apartments, recreation, sport and culture should be solved.
The mayor’s offices of Tatarauca Veche and Regina Maria villages, where the mayors attracted projects to develop the infrastructure, were personally very motivated in this respect. The biggest failure in the last four years was witnessed by the mayor’s offices where the mayors represent the Party of Communists because these had less influence in the district council. The Soroca mayor’s office, which manages the largest number of people, achieved the smallest results. It received the lowest funds from the administration of Soroca district, while the projects it submitted to the Development Agency North, even if some of these were accepted, weren’t supported financially for political reasons.
Over the last four years, the promises made by the Liberal Democratic Party, whose representatives manage the district, were delivered to the smallest extent. In general, the promises of the candidates were less than 10% fulfilled. These didn’t refer much to infrastructure and the economic sector, which are the main sectors on which the community development process is based.
The main expectations of the June 14 local elections are to have a competent government that will attract investments and will implement projects. A balance between the political forces is needed for achieving community consensus, while the local councilors must be ready to cooperate for the benefit of the community, not for the purpose of developing their parties.
Mariana Galben, IPN
