Western Romania County Cuts Half the Jobs in Local Administration, Performance Remains the Same

Romania is the Heaven of the public employees. Not only they are double the North Korean Army, but they’re also paid almost double as compared to the employees in the private sector in Romania.

Precisely, the Romanian Public Employees Corp is formed by 1.4 million state employees. They work in different domains, from medical to teaching and from local police to environment protection. The average salary in the public sector in Romania is around 1,050 EUR, while the average net salary in the private sector is around 600 EUR.

The thing with all these public employees is that they are too many, too well-paid for their performance, and too poorly trained to do their jobs properly. We’re not talking about exceptions who do their jobs as all of them should or who dedicate themselves to the communities they serve. We talk about the average Joe working for the public administration who comes to the office to do almost nothing and to collect the payment at the end of the month.

This is why the leader of one of the County councils from Western Romania started reforming the system. He cut off 50% of the jobs in the local administration. Exactly as expected, things run smoothly, no delays, no complaints, no anything. The remaining people do their jobs at the level expected, even though they are half as many as they used to.

In these conditions, it is clear that the army of public employees in Romania needs to be restructured and reforms to be implemented all over the country. Three major directions should be approached:

• less people in public positions, wherever the situation allows for less people to accomplish the same tasks
• salaries need to be adjusted to the country’s economic performance
• professional training needs to be offered at all levels.

Yes, the public servants need to be paid well for offering their best to the citizens. But in Romania, along with bigger salaries, there comes more bureaucracy, more patronizing looks, and less help. And this is said not only by the expats living in Romania but also by the Romanians, fed up with this system that survived too long for a country that joined the European Union in 2007.