The Comrat mayor’s office will not provide the salary bonus of 1,300 lei, as the Government earlier announced. According to the mayor of the municipality of Comrat Sergey Anastasov, the central authorities announced salary raises, but left the mayor’s offices to cope alone. Their mayor’s office does not have funds to increase the pays and the Government violated the law when it approved pay raises without financial backing, IPN reports.
Under the state budget law, all the public sector employees in 2023 will have their salaries raised by 1,300 lei. According to the mayor of Comrat, the Government instructed the mayor’s offices to raise the pays of functionaries, but didn’t allocate money from the state budget for the purpose.
“If the budget of mayor’s offices is raised by 20%, we will be able to raise the pays of employees by 20%, not by 100%. We now have to find 1,300 lei for employees. We do not have available funds. Where shall we find them? Shall we put on glasses and look for them? We are unable to cover such a rise. We need over 5 million lei. We also need another 2 million lei to pay to state bodies. It is 7-8 million lei in total. Where shall we take this money from? We will not raise the salaries as we do not have such a possibility. The Government broke the law as this provides that pay raises cannot be decided in the absence of funds,” Sergey Anastasov stated in the program “Reflection Points” on Vocea Basarabiei channel.
According to the mayor, the municipality of Comrat develops, but investments at the local level cannot be made. Most of the projects implemented in the city are financed by the country’s foreign partners as the local budget is too small to cover infrastructure modernization projects.
“We create workplaces. Since 2017, we have attracted large investments. The company Fujikura created over 1,000 jobs. There are also other companies, like Kaufland. Most of the money into the budget comes from these companies. We cannot do much for the city with our own funds. We benefit from European projects. We have a bypassing road that cost €28 million. The road was finished. The Lyceum “Mihai Eminescu” is now being constructed and almost 20 million lei is invested there. Turkey is the largest investor in the city. The projects financed by Turkey came to 400 million lei. A new stadium was built several years ago. The House of Culture was fully repaired. We now have a project to build sports grounds that is financed by Germany through the GIZ,” stated the mayor.
Earlier, the heads of a number of districts also said that they do not have funds to raise the pays of public sector employees by 1,300 lei a month. Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilița said the local public authorities that do not have funds for the purpose can seek help from the Ministry of Finance. In reply, the Ministry said the LPAs should prioritize their costs.
