Deputy minister offices to be removed in Moldova

Chisinau, 14 July /MOLDPRES/ - The offices of deputy minister will be removed and will be replaced by positions of general state secretary in the government. The parliament adopted a draft law to this end in the final reading today.

Under the draft, the general state secretaries will have a status of civil servants of higher level leadership. They will be in charge of carrying out job connections between the leadership of the ministry and the corps of civil servants, as well as between the ministry’s subdivisions.

The general state secretaries will have the following prerogatives: will provide support to the minister to establish the ministry’s strategic goals and trends; will coordinate the working out of the ministry’s programmes and activity plans; reports on their implementation in the ministry’s activity sectors; will elaborate and propose ways of achieving the strategic objectives and trends of the ministry’s work. Also, the general state secretaries will participate in the cabinet meetings, without having right to vote, if they are delegated by the minister or in other cases provided for by the law.

The state secretaries will be appointed to office according to criteria of professionalism. The number of state secretaries will be established by the government, at a proposal by the minister, depending on the activity fields within the competence of the ministry.

The draft law was backed by 52 lawmakers and triggered dissensions in the session hall. The MPs of the Liberal Party’s faction showed discontent about a string of provisions on the payment of wages in the new structure of the government. According to the Liberals, the new regulations will lead to a decrease in salaries of public servants.

The draft’s authors said that the legislative amendments were necessary to implement the government’s reform and would not cause decreases in salaries.

(Reporter A. Zara, editor L. Alcaza)