At the same time, an officer in the Ministry of Interior Affairs earns over RON10,700 per month, double as much as the minister, who makes RON4993.
Only half the ministries continued to updated their lists of net incomes earned by employees, despite the fact that on May 25 2010 president Traian Basescu asked all public institutions to publish on their websites the incomes earned by employees of ministries, agencies and public corporations in order to make spending of public money more transparent. But a large part of ministries only did that for April 2010, afterwards “forgetting” to update their lists.
Some ministries continued to publish their employees’ salaries. The most “diligent” one in this respect has been the Ministry of Administration and Interior Affairs, which has published on a monthly basis, from April 2010 until July 2012, the net salary of employees on the home page of the institution.
In fact, the biggest discrepancies between the salaries of bosses and of lower-ranked employees are to be found in the Interior Affairs and External Affairs ministries.
Over 60 employees of the almost 870 of the Interior Affairs ministry earned higher net amounts than the minister, who makes RON4,993. The law of unitary pay in the public sector, demanded by the IMF, which entered into force in 2010, has proven its failure considering that there are still lower-ranking officers who earn more than the minister or the president.
Why haven’t these anomalies been fixed?
“Because, at least until public sector pay returns to the level of June 2010, the Constitutional Court will not allow differentiated pay rises in order for wage levels to become more balanced. The law entered into force, but a cut to existing wages was never considered.
Instead, one sought to fix the anomaly by differentiated salary increases, which were not possible at the time because they would have meant boosting by 30% the budget of public sector employees,” says an official who worked on the unitary pay law and who wished to remain anonymous.
With the exception of the Culture ministry, where the pay hierarchy is respected (the biggest salary is the minister’s – RON4,624), in all other ministries which continued to publish their salaries there is at least one manager who earns more than the minister.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)