At today\u2019s panel discussion, \u201cWe Are Building the Foundations of Change. For Your Time That Is Coming,\u201d held to mark one year of the Government\u2019s mandate, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Inter-Community Relations Ivan Stoilkovic spoke about the problems he encountered upon taking office at the Ministry of Inter-Community Relations as well as what has been accomplished during the past period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014When you hear the Prime Minister say that we inherited a state with shattered foundations, that is best reflected in the situation I found at the Ministry for Inter-Community Relations. There was no work program in place, nor any internal operational documents for the Ministry. The work was being conducted outside the rules and regulations, outside the laws and the Constitution of our country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, the first thing we managed to do\u2014and what we saw as necessary\u2014was to adopt a Strategic Work Plan. The Strategic Work Plan outlines the Ministry\u2019s activities regarding the stabilization of interethnic relations and requires a great deal of energy and effort to establish political stability in the country, which is a necessary condition for economic development. Once we established the internal working documents and adopted a work program, things slowly began to move in the right direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I want to highlight the difference in the Ministry\u2019s operations from the time of the previous minister to today\u2014specifically under the budget I manage. Expenses have been reduced by 60%, or to put that into perspective for citizens, that\u2019s a savings of around \u20ac1,220,000. We\u2019ve succeeded in eliminating all unproductive costs, and everything that was in any way a result of previous irresponsible practices no longer exists. What\u2019s particularly important is that we\u2019ve fully implemented the recommendations of the Council for Public Administration Reform. There\u2019s no longer a situation where people receive salaries while staying at home. When I took office, there were 296 employees in the Ministry under various contracts and arrangements. Today, 112 of them are no longer employed, each case handled through proper procedures and on different grounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let me be clear so as not to be misunderstood\u2014those 112 individuals are no longer part of the Ministry through fully legal means. The Ministry has not received a single complaint, appeal, or lawsuit regarding the decisions that were made, which confirms that everything was done properly. From that perspective, we still have about 79 such individuals remaining, and those processes are currently ongoing. We hope to close that chapter of the Ministry\u2019s work by the end of the year. Our goal is for the Ministry to operate with around 80 to 90 employees, which I believe is a reasonable and efficient number for an institution with this level of responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the meantime, we introduced a new program for commemorating the national days of ethnic communities, and I believe that members of the smaller ethnic groups are already<\/p>\n\n\n\n
feeling the change\u2014it is quite significant. We faced obstacles at the beginning, but gradually and steadily, we are removing those barriers. We\u2019re confident that as time goes on, these efforts will continue to grow and move in a positive direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I would also like to address the competition for funding associations and non-governmental organizations, as there were some public reactions questioning the way the funds were allocated. I have responded to this to some extent, but I believe the Macedonian public needs to hear it once again\u2014because this is a time of reforms, a time of complete change, and what was \u201cthe way things were\u201d should no longer continue. The essence of the Ministry has fundamentally changed and besides supporting the smaller ethnic communities, we must also take care of some of the state\u2019s fundamental priorities, such as promoting the EU, fighting corruption, and similar issues, which must be part of these programmatic priorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And most importantly, everyone assumes that the minister makes internal decisions regarding the allocation of funds, which is not the case at this time. I have intentionally excluded myself from the decision-making process and left the decision to a commission consisting of seven members, representatives from almost all ministries. In the commission, the representative from my Ministry was a member of the Bosniak community; there was one member from the Vlach community, two Albanians, and three Macedonians. This is everything related to transparency and to showing that we take care of how the funds are distributed to avoid any comments like in the previous period, when the minister used his authority to change funding decisions according to his wishes, contrary to recommendations. Thus, in the past period, funds were awarded to 33 organizations from one national community, which is completely unacceptable. From that perspective, the difference is huge and very visible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And finally, what I would like to emphasize is that we have advanced the functioning of the Ministry so much that whoever takes this position after me will step into a well-organized institution, with solid foundations, where they will be able to continue working smoothly and carry out their duties, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Inter-Community Relations, Stoilkovic stated in his address.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At today\u2019s panel discussion, \u201cWe Are Building the Foundations of Change. For Your Time That Is Coming,\u201d held to mark one year of the Government\u2019s mandate, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Inter-Community Relations Ivan Stoilkovic spoke about the problems he encountered upon taking office at the Ministry of Inter-Community Relations as well as what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main-news","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moz.gov.mk\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moz.gov.mk\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moz.gov.mk\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moz.gov.mk\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moz.gov.mk\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/moz.gov.mk\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":648,"href":"https:\/\/moz.gov.mk\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions\/648"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moz.gov.mk\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moz.gov.mk\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moz.gov.mk\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moz.gov.mk\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}