Eit’s a incontrovertible fact that a number of issues didn’t go nicely and are usually not going nicely within the Native Authorities reform. In an effort to alter as a lot as they might, we as soon as once more managed to use Cypriot patents to resolve issues and bend resistances, if solely to attain the general aim. In some way, and with this absurd logic, we created 93 deputy mayors, from the place we had 30. Now in Cyprus it’s simpler to discover a “deputy mayor” than a plumber or electrician for the home.
Absolutely a technique to scale back them must be discovered. And the perfect is just not the straightforward elimination of a few of those who exist at the moment, however the correct redistribution and separation of native flats by municipality. In Limassol, for instance, there’s a deputy mayor for an area district-community of fifty voters, however there isn’t any deputy mayor of Agia Phyla which is even perhaps bigger in inhabitants than the Mesa Geitonia district. How are these completed? We’re in Cyprus. Then again, nevertheless, we have to escape for some time from the catchy problem of deputy mayors, as a result of behind it are hidden a thousand or two different issues of Native Authorities, way more severe than the neighborhood chief of X village who in someday turned the deputy mayor of a big municipality.
A particularly severe problem is the difficulty of municipal staffing. Within the final decade there have been few or no recruitments within the municipalities, whereas dozens of workers have retired. This problem created enormous gaps within the organizational charts of the municipalities which haven’t been resolved even after the mergers. Key positions for scientific personnel stay vacant, with the outcome that there are not any appropriate executives for the right operation of the municipal equipment. The identical and worse for the employees. The widespread apply of hiring short-term workers has created huge job insecurity, with events renewing contracts and cashing in promissory notes earlier than and after elections, with minimal standards for effectiveness. This 40% moratorium on the payroll additionally got here, whereas then again, if somebody asks the mayors, they are going to add up tons of of vacancies within the organizational charts that the Ministry of the Inside itself has authorized. Fastened-term staff could also be a sensible resolution, however no one takes under consideration the expertise that’s misplaced, whereas in some unspecified time in the future we’ve to take a look at the rights of the employees.
And when within the municipalities we’ve municipal machines that can’t work effectively, then the citizen pays for it. I don't know what number of municipalities throughout Cyprus might survive financially at the moment in the event that they had been non-public corporations. Particularly in touristic municipalities, should you search for how a lot uncollected cash there’s from using public areas by taverns and cafes, you’ll not consider it. A small survey of the property of the municipalities given for rent-crumbs to acquaintances and strangers is indicative of the prevailing state of affairs.
So the speak about the necessity to scale back the variety of deputy mayors is nice, however let's not lose sight of the forest for the bushes. Within the municipalities, even after the reform, there are such a lot of different enormous issues that create large monetary holes. No municipality will go bankrupt for 1,500 euros to some deputy mayor, with out which means that each one of us should pay them for no cause. The problem lends itself simply to populism, but it surely additionally reveals an ignorance of the a lot larger issues which can be being swept beneath the rug.
