The new law on the salary system is to take effect on December 1, 2018 and the first higher salaries will be thus paid in January for work done in December, Ion Chicu, secretary general of state at the Ministry of Finance, stated in an interview for Radio Free Europe that is quoted by IPN.
Ion Chicu said the salary is easily calculated according to the new scheme. The lowest reference value is set and the pay is calculated depending on the coefficients for each of the 130 classes of the salary system. “This means that when there are possibilities for raising the salary, the lowest reference value is increased and the pays are thus raised from down to up for everyone. Until now, for example, they decided to raise the salaries separately for judges and separately for public servants and the raises depend on the capacity to have these changes adopted by a sector group or another,” he explained.
The general reference value at this stage will be 1,500 lei with small exceptions. For teachers and auxiliary personnel that now have very low salaries, the authorities suggest a reference value of 1,600 lei. “For budget-funded employees who hold elective public posts, almost 250 posts, the reference value will be lower as they have rather high pays now. The reference value will be 1,300 or 1,350 lei, but we are now carrying out the last assessments. The reference value for judges will be 2,200 lei for the simple reason that they now have very high salaries and if the reference value is lower they will get lower pays, but this is inadmissible,” stated the secretary general of state.
The reference value is reexamined annually depending on the economic conditions. Asked what will happen if the economic conditions are bad, Ion Chicu said only the raise is taken into account as, if it is revised down, this will be against the constitutional provisions and no one will accept to receive lower pays. That’s why when this minimum reference value is set, the authorities make sure they have financial coverage for financing this law and reform.
According to the secretary general of state, the new law will be implemented at a cost of about 1.4 billion lei, which means that the salary fund in the public system in 2019 will rise to almost 15 billion lei. Namely this figure of personnel public expenditures is agreed and coordinated with the International Monetary Fund.
