TIRANA, Jan. 16 – Data from the non-governmental portal “Open.Spending.Albania” showed that expenditures to execute court decisions for work dismissals in the country reached high values during 2018.
Referring to payments executed by the State Treasury at the Ministry of Finance, 2,595 transactions carried out from January 2018 until the end of December and valued approximately 13.8 million dollars, have seriously damaged the state’s budget.
These expenditures belong to state institutions and local government units and consist of payments made to officials who have won trials at Tirana’s Administrative Court of Appeals for unjust work dismissals.
There was only a slight drop in 2018 in terms of this category of public expenditure as opposed to 2017, during which approximately 14.4 million dollars were spent.
Over the last five years, more than 102 million dollars have been spent for unjust work dismissals.
The year 2014 holds the record for the highest spendings, following the parliamentary elections of 2013 when the state budget paid approximately 32 million dollars for court decisions.
Independent analysts find that there is still a gap between the country’s legal and political framework and its implementation in the public administration.
According to analysts, public administration continues to be characterized by unstable careers, high degree of change reflected in the limited experience of civil servants and from time to time emerging bad practices such as bribe offerings for jobs, abuse of power and the impact of party politics in appointments from the simplest clerks to senior officials.
Earlier this week, the Voice of America published an article based on Serious Crimes Prosecution Office investigations and interceptions on former head of Prisons Arben Cuko that tore down the facade of employment competitions to enter the public administration.
Based on Cuko’s communications with local and higher-ranking officials and evidence ensured by VoA from exchange messages, the prisons’ system employment process is based on influence and political ties much more than on the contestants’ fair competition.
The division of job positions in the country’s public administration based on political ties instead of meritocracy is a problem that has followed Albania’s transition closely.
Public administration reform is another pre-condition for membership to the EU, whose latest progress report called for further steps in securing an efficient, depoliticized and professional administration.
Meanwhile, the Rama government has denied indulging in such practices and has defended its position of trying to terminate the practice, which has hampered Albania’s democratization for the last thirty years.
However, the VoA and other experts have stood by their claims that clientelism continues to run strong in Albania and have made all interceptions and interviews were officials have admitted using their influence to enable employment of different individuals public, so that readers can decide for themselves whether the public administration’s employment process is fair and ethical.
