ZAGREB, April 17, 2019 - Administration Minister Lovro Kuščević on Wednesday met with county prefects and discussed reform measures under which state administration tasks would be transferred to counties as of 1 January 2020.
Kuščević that he has three goals during his term in office - better state administration, decentralisation and digitisation. He added that the State Administration Act will help achieve two of the goals, raising the efficiency of state administration and decentralisation.
Asked about downsizing of state administration, Kuščević said that today there are about 2,500 public servants working in state administration and about 2,000 working in county administration, where he said more will be hired. He, however, added that following the principle of rationality they will try to ensure that as few staff as possible are transferred to counties.
"In cooperation with the Finance Ministry, we have prepared a redundancy programme and expect about 500 to 600 public servants to take advantage of severance packages, which means counties will have that many fewer staff. In the end that calculation will be negligible for the state budget and costs will remain at the present level," the minister said.
This meeting was held with a view to preparing the counties for technical matters so that the system is up and running by 1 January 2020, Kuščević said.
"The agreement that the government will reach with the counties will secure funds for wages for the staff transferring to the counties. They won't be ensured funds for additional hiring and would have to pay any additional staff from their own budgets," Kuščević explained.
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