Haradinaj's decision to raise salaries could be abolished in June

Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj's decision to raise salaries for his subordinates is valid only until June of this year, because the Ministry of Public Administration has drafted the document's concept of the law on salary leveling.

MAP Minister Mahir Yahgcilar and representatives of the GAP Institute claim that the bill, which is the European Commission's requirement for wage levels in the public sector, will abolish the prime minister's decision to raise his salary from 1,500 to 2,950 euros.

It can happen, because the law when approved then is a law that is valid. Whether the same report remains or that decision is changed, during the work, during the draft, and when the Government Bill is proposed, the impact will be known on the financial value the respective positions”, Minister Jagcilar said.

Minister Yagcilar for Kosovo Press has said it will be for the first time a law regulating all positions in terms of salaries for all sectors.

According to him, the highest salary will be for the president of state, and the lowest salary will be 232 euros.

Jagcilar did not declare what the president's salary would be, because according to him, it is not yet defined.

The report between the minimum wage and maximum wage in the Republic of Kosovo, ranging from the lowest position to the highest position, the position of president of the Republic of Kosovo. The law will regulate reports, ranging from cofyonions number 1 to 10 or 12, then becoming calculations and order of all positions that exist in various fields... At this point in terms of public administration and public sector, the lowest salary is 232 euros and is continued with higher wages having some heads of institutions”, the Minister Jagcilar has said.

Policy analyst at the GAP Institute, Wisar Rushiti, has said of Kosova Preris that the government should proceed with a law to level wages to preserve the same principle “Page for the same work”.

He stressed that as the GAP institute has participated in public discussions on concept-document and expect that under the Ministry of Public Administration's own plans, the draft law on salaries in the public sector, along with two other laws that are essential for all public reform and administration, will be submitted for approval to Government in June and then sent as the package for approval to the Parliament.

“As far as the government's previous decision on wages is concerned, salaries have increased mainly in the prime minister's office, where a number of political staff and then even some civil servants have been affected. We think that the wage bill must bring down the decision, because even the law is greater in the hierarchy of documents than the decision and the decision is precisely this decision that undermines the leveling of wages that Government itself intends to build as logic and as a concept through the law on wages, that is, there should be positions that are the same jobs, that should be in the same salary. The decision, on the other hand, makes it largely the opposite, undermines the government's own concept and the very goal of having a salary level in the public sector”, Rushiti has said.

He has added that it is currently the highest pay of the president in the public sector and believes it should be, and then others should be, as speaker of the assembly, chairman of the Constitutional Court, prime minister and other positions, to the lowest position in the public sector.

Although this salary bill, according to Minister Mahir Jagcilar, does not apply to public enterprises, or to three top salaries in Kosovo, to Trust Director Adrian Zalli, about 6 thousand euros a month, the salary of Kosovo Telecom director Agron Mustafa, who receives a salary of 5 thousand and 200 euros a month, as well as the salary of Kosovo Central Bank Governor, of 4 thousand and 328 euros a month.

Minister Yagcilar has said that the possibility exists to create a harmonisation and a comparison to salaries from the budget with those in public enterprises.

“As far as public enterprises are concerned, you know these are accomplishing salaries outside the budget of the Republic of Kosovo, if required an interconnection can be established... Even the Kosovar Privatisation Agency (AKP) will be within the law on salaries, the Trust is out of budget, the CEC and PTK are linked to the law for companies”, Minister Jagcilar has said.

Visar Rushiti has said that for wage levels, the same should happen to public companies and independent agencies, because salaries in the Trust and Telecom of Kosovo are not reasonable.

No, it's not reasonable wages, there's no reasonable salary, which could be 5,000 euros, or 3 grand euros. What is in Kosovo today is the result and result of individual decisions by individual institutions. I have, for example, a managerial independence, or an independence for the salary deployments in my institution, and I make the decision to raise wages on our own will and according to our own benefit, and according to a budgetary and financial opportunity that we have as a budgetary organization, we are assuming that we are part of a public sector. But this should not be so: salaries should be set for the entire position in the public sector centralisedly, and all this should be followed and not left in the will of separate institutions and put to salary”, Rushiti has said.

While, for the establishment of a public sector wage law, there is also a requirement for reforms in public administration by the European Commission.