Skopje, 26 July 2024 (MIA) - Out of the 120 annual employment plans submitted by public sector institutions to the Ministry of Public Administration for approval, only five received a positive opinion from the Ministry. The remaining 115 were returned for revision, primarily due to incorrect entries of ethnic group percentages or non-compliance with the new calculation method of the ‘balancer.’

Minister Goran Minchev called on public sector institutions at a press conference on Friday to include the percentage of ethnic groups in their employment plans according to the revised calculation of the web tool ‘balancer.’ He reminded them that when calculating the percentages, only the number of resident population is taken into account, not the non-resident population from the 2021 census.

"The difference in percentages according to the conducted census," he said, "for Macedonians is from 54.21% to 58.44%, Albanians from 29.52% to 24.30%, Turks from 3.98% to 3.86%, Roma from 2.34% to 2.53%, Serbs from 1.18% to 1.30%, Vlachs from 0.44% to 0.47%, and Bosniaks with an identical percentage of 0.87%."

“Public sector institutions have been notified, and their annual plans have been returned for revision in order to align with the corrected data in the newly implemented ‘balancer’ solution, based on the resident population of the territory of the Republic of North Macedonia. I call on public sector institutions to follow our remarks, recommendations, and instructions and to resubmit them for approval to the Ministry of Public Administration as soon as possible,” Minchev said.

In response to whether there are significant deviations from the allowed representation of ethnic groups and how violations will be handled, Minchev pointed to the new Ministry of Public Administration that he leads as an example of misuse of the ‘balancer.’ As he stated, out of 100 percent employment in the Ministry of Public Administration at the moment, 43 to 45 percent are employees from ethnic groups, which indicates the ‘balancer’ has been misused.

In response to a journalist's question about whether there will be a new law after the withdrawal of the laws on civil servants officers and public sector employees from parliamentary procedure, the Minister Minchev announced that a broad public debate will be opened at the end of the month, inviting all stakeholders to participate in order to create solid, quality, and applicable laws. He mentioned that the topic of a new law could also be discussed.

Photo: Ministry of Public Administration