Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan's appeal after the adoption of the administration reform: “Stop wasting money”
Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan declared on Wednesday, April 29, that the reform in the administration was adopted and must be done, but “local authorities must do their analysis, stop wasting money”.
Ilie Bolojan/PHOTO: Inquam photos/George Călin
“The reform in the administration has been adopted, it must be done, it must be completed. But for this, the local authorities must do their analysis, stop wasting money, control their personnel, and each ministry must do what was necessary.
Some ministries thus exceeded the deadlines, they didn't make their cuts, because it's a convenient situation, and as long as you don't make your cuts in the administration, you don't have the necessary resources to come up with other support packages, let's get along. They are related to each other.
These things are done, not very easily, and that's why I told you there must be committed people, who when a decision is made, they take it on and put it into practice, even if it doesn't sound good. The things that have been adopted do not escape their responsibility”, said Ilie Bolojan on TVR.
Although some measures generated dissatisfaction, the prime minister said they were necessary and gave some examples.
“Think, for example, there was criticism related to the introduction of the health insurance contribution. We were paying 6.3 million Romanians health contributions, because there were a lot of exceptions and 16.5 million benefited. Or, the systems cannot work in this formula. There is no way to go in this formula.”
“The most dangerous thing is to create expectations that you no longer meet”
Ilie Bolojan says that property taxes have not been raised for years, and a significant percentage of homes (10–15%) were not paying taxes.
“But, rightfully so, citizens claim to live on a paved street that has utilities, a town hall that provides its services, but the property tax is the contribution of each citizen to the local budget.
Of course, they must ensure that local governments do not make fun of this money. But the state budget had nowhere left to continue the investment works that are being started all over the country.”
The Prime Minister says that it has been in this situation for years and that “it's much fairer to tell people the truth, even if they don't approve of you.”
“Nobody wants to pay an extra fee. But the most dangerous thing that the political world has done in these years is to create expectations that you no longer honor, to tolerate injustices, to allow the looting of public money, because, quite rightly, people no longer trust the direction in which a country is moving.
And this perception of misdirection comes from behind, and you cannot correct it overnight, no matter who is in government. This does not mean that each government has no responsibility for what happens in its mandate. But that's the truth.”
