Although the public debate on the Draft Amendments to the Law on Salaries in the Public Sector ended on December 8, the Ministry of Finance has not yet published a report that should contain a detailed account of all remarks and proposals related to this important act.
"News" is a department managed by the minister Novica Vuković asked to give a detailed explanation of all the remarks received, from whom and what was accepted, but this information was not disclosed. It is not specified that the report from the public discussion will be published on the ministry's website and when the proposal will be sent to the Government for adoption.
"We received hundreds of comments from over 100 participants, which the Ministry of Finance is considering in detail. The Ministry of Finance is preparing a report on the public debate, in accordance with which it will define the final steps in the coming period in order to create a high-quality and comprehensive legal solution", was the response of the Ministry of Finance to all the questions raised.
The most important novelty found in this draft law is that the Government of Prime Minister Milojko Spajić plans to increase salaries by 30 percent through the increase of coefficients for calculating wages, for all public officials, which will cost citizens 8,5 million euros annually.
All public officials received higher salaries recently through the implementation of the "Europe Now 2" program.
Public officials are the presidents of the Government, the Assembly and the state, ministers, deputies, the president and members of the Senate of the State Audit Institution, the protector of human rights and freedoms, the president of the State Commission, the presidents and judges of the Supreme, Appellate, Constitutional, Commercial, higher and basic courts, the supreme state prosecutor, chief special prosecutor, other prosecutors, local officials...
The Ministry of Finance's justification for the salary increase is that "now in the salary system, certain employees have higher salaries than superior managers".
The intention for higher salaries is also justified by the fact that "in the past few years, through changes in collective agreements, the coefficients of job complexity have been increased for all employees in the public sector, except for public officials and holders of judicial and constitutional court functions".
The President of the Education Union officially confirmed this to "Vijesti" earlier Radomir Božović and the president of the State Administration and Judiciary Union Nenad Rakočević that the Ministry of Finance, without the knowledge of the working group preparing the new law on wages in the public sector, made amendments to this law which planned to increase the wages of all officials by 30 percent.
"As a member of the Working Group in front of the Union, I am taken aback by this decision. In June, I attended the meeting of the Working Group for the last time, and since then I have not received an invitation to the meeting, and I am not aware that there have been any activities on this matter. I heard unofficially that there was a meeting last Friday, and we did not find an invitation for that meeting in the files we have in the Union. The Union was taken aback when this draft was published the day before yesterday, and we will soon take a position on this issue," Božović told "Vijesta" on November 20.
On the same day, Rakočević said that they had a meeting on November 15 when the Ministry of Finance presented them with amendments to the law on salaries in the public sector and that they were surprised because the Working Group was preparing a new law, not amendments.
"This public hearing is another law," Rakočević stressed.
He said that the intention of the Government is to exclude the coefficients for the calculation of salaries of employees in the public sector from collective agreements and to define salaries in the public sector by means of decrees.
"We will not agree to that. The basis for salary calculation is branch collective agreements and nothing can be changed without the consent of the union when it comes to salaries," said Rakočević.
Bonus video:
