TIRANA, Feb. 14 – State budget data analyzed by a number of media and economy experts during the first two months of the new year show that during 2018, 1,7 billion Albanian Lek were spent to pay court bills for unjust work dismissals.
This equals to approximately 13 million euros, as Tirana Times has also previously reported.
The state budget spent nearly 2,700 payments over 2018 to pay the court compensations for unfair dismissals from central or local public administration.
Bills classified as “expenditure on executing judicial decisions about work dismissals” have consumed tens of thousands of euros in recent years, initially due to massive changes in public administration following the arrival of the Socialist government and the ruling Socialist Movement for Integration in 2013 and later as a result of changes in local government in 2015, as well as the passing of the SMI as an opposition party in 2017.
Available data from 2014 and onwards show that in total, taxpayers have repaid 11.6 billion ALL (about 93 million euros) to repay unjust work dismissals.
In 2016 expenditures for this reason reached 1.7 billion ALL . The expenditures of 2015 and 2014 respectively reached 3.1billion ALL and 3.3 billion ALL.
The Ministry of Economy and Finance is the biggest cause of unfair dismissals, mainly due to the functioning of the two main state institutions, the General Directorate of Taxation and the General Directorate of Customs.
During 2018, this ministry was forced to pay 439 million ALL for unjust dismissals, compared to the 370 million ALL spent in 2017. However, data for 2018 also include the expenses of the former Ministry of Economic Cooperation, Trade and Entrepreneurship, which joined the Ministry of Finance after the 2017 elections.
The Ministry of Environment, which went from belonging to SMI to the SP in 2017, added unpaid vacation costs to 186 million ALL in 2018, as opposed to 109 million in 2017. A large part of the bills of this ministry come from a so-called “Reform” undertaken after the 2013 elections when the forest inspectorate was dissolved and the environmental inspectorate was set up, which led to the dismissal of former inspectors and the appointment of new inspectors.
The Ministry of Health, which was also restructured by absorbing the former Ministry of Welfare, is the third largest payer with 186 million ALL in 2018, followed by the Ministry of Justice with 128 million ALL.
Another public institution with many such bills is the Municipality of Tirana, which during the past year paid 122 million ALL.
The judicial process in Albania lasts for years and the bills paid in 2018 partly belong to the layoffs from the current government and partly to layoffs in the past years, from the Democratic Party.
The costs reached for unfair work dismissals have reach such a worrisome point for the government, a new category was created in 2014 for this kind of expenditure.
Based on this data, 2019 is expected to serve a new bill that can add to the state budget’s burden an additional five to seven million euros – a burden that Albanian taxpayers have to pay.
There are times when one day a new director can make 100 layoffs, making collective dismissals the heaviest burden for everyone.
