VMRO-DPMNE Vice President Gordana Dimitrieska Kochoska at today’s panel discussion entitled “What the municipalities inherited” organized by VMRO-DPMNE on the occasion of 100 days of local government, said that the most important thing is to see the transparency and accountability of municipalities by previous SDSM mayors, for which, as an interim deputy minister, she requested insight into the report on how the 50 million euros that the government allocated to the municipalities in the form of one-time financial assistance were spent, adding that they were not used to service the debts.
What is the most important thing for me to discuss today is the transparency of this government and the transparency of the municipalities and the users of the local self-government units, ie we are talking about schools, kindergartens and other institutions. If you remember, in 2016, first of all, during the parliamentary elections, there was constant talk about some kind of transparency, it was discussed that they announced that they would be transparent and open. In 2017, also during the local elections, there was constant commentary and indeed the government in 2018 made an attempt to be open to the citizens and to be transparent. But let’s see what that transparency was. I tried to extract parts of the Law on Reporting and Recording of Obligations. This is the first law that SDSM adopted in 2018 and this law said that all public institutions and municipalities, kindergartens, schools, ministries and others have the obligation to report their obligations to the Ministry of Finance, by the tenth day of the month for the previous month, and this is everyone’s responsibility. It is clearly stated that the Ministry of Finance is competent, and Article 12 and Article 13 provide for the supervision and what are the fines or penalties for non-compliance with this law. Furthermore, a few months later, they adopted the Law on Financial Assistance to the Municipal Self-Government Units of the Municipalities and the Beneficiary Units, according to which law, if you remember, the municipality was given a one-time assistance in the amount of about 50 million euros, and it was stated again that fines and penalties will be paid in case of non-compliance with the law, says Dimitrieska Kochoska.
