"How good", when the state has a break!

2024-03-16 22:22:00, Aktualitet CNA

Public administration is a field in which leaders serve communities to advance the common good and effect positive change.

Public administration professionals must be equipped with the skills to manage at all levels of government (local, state), as well as non-profit organizations.

The most important main values ??of public administration are transparency, accountability, ethics, professionalism and leadership.

Not by chance, from Greek philosophy, the expression that those who have a vocation should work in the administration, just like a person who becomes a cleric from a religious vocation, has been adapted to today's concepts.

In Albania, we rarely find these values. On the contrary, it can be said that the Albanian administration is anti-vocation. In the state, often the main motive for employment is that you hope to become rich within a short period.

The decision is made/ Friday, March 15, holiday
March 13, 20:26

The latest SPAK investigations are revealing facts about how many individuals have invested assets that they cannot justify with their "modest" salaries they receive in the state.

The criteria set for years for the declaration of assets have not managed to filter the mechanisms used to hide the income, or even to clean it. This revenue is actually taxpayer money that would otherwise have been used for more roads, services, schools, hospitals and so on.

The other motive is comfort. The administration enjoys as many days as it can without working. Whenever there is an official holiday near the weekend, the closest day is legally a holiday, not serving the hundreds of citizens who have various troubles, or the businesses that depend on productivity to generate their employees' wages and profits.

The administration also took advantage of the Prime Minister's zeal to equalize the wages of the region, deliberately causing pressure on the private labor market, with enterprises that today have entered a vicious circle, as they were forced to raise wages, without accompanying it with labor productivity. .

The leadership, for its part, uses the administration as a mechanism to win votes. Whenever elections approach, the number of employees in state institutions swells as if by magic.

INSTAT data show that in the two quarters before the April 2021 general elections, nearly 12,000 new employees were added to the state sector, which is the highest historical increase since 2000 when the data is reported.

Although every service is going online, the administration remains busy. In the state apparatus at the end of 2023, there were about 182 thousand employees, or 18 thousand more than a decade ago.

Ironically, neither their higher number nor the passage of online services in many cases have helped the citizens and businesses who continue to travel even today to get a mortgage, or the subjects whose activity has stalled every time the e- Albania falls and they have nowhere to complain.

The experience of these decades has taught us not to expect too much from the administration and its claimed values. Few expect to honestly win a tender, or quickly resolve a problem without paying a bribe, even though the justice reform is exerting its own pressure.

That's why we are "happy" when institutions have one more day off. Imagine how much money is saved from tender theft, or missing bribes.

A World Bank periodic global survey of businesses, which are asked about issues related to the business climate such as corruption, taxes, crime and the regulatory environment, has found that 36% of Albanian businesses have admitted to being asked for bribes by officials at least once.

This figure is three times higher than the regional average and twice the world average. It is money that would have been saved, if public administration professionals and leadership had the minimum vocation to shape an administration that would focus on the public good and not the personal one.

So let them rest better! In May, for example, May 1st is a Wednesday, let the whole week be off, along with May 6th (which is the Easter holiday).

But anyway, we have a good one from the short and unexpected vacations of the administration. Not everyone goes abroad, and a large part of the money earned outside of work is also spent on private businesses, not all of which are connected to the government./ Monitor.al