Skopje, 11 January 2024 (MIA) - Is the "balancer" tool meeting its purpose or is it abused, since ethnic affiliation is the basic requirement for employment, or is its application exhausted and should be cancelled after 20 years. The State Commission for Prevention of Corruption (SCPC) will file an initiative to the Constitutional Court to reassess the laws that include the balancer tool.

At Thursday's session, SCPC also decided to file an initiative to the Constitutional Court to assess the legality of the law on transfer of administrative staff and its conflict with other laws, namely the people employed through a specific programme of the Ministry for Political System and Community Relations, the so-called "framework employees" or stay-at-home staff who were not assigned job tasks but received their wages.

It is not familiar if the law is still applied and whether the staff has already been transferred in state institutions, because the Ministry for Political System and Community Relations has not provided data to SCPC "but continues to publish job ads".

On the balancer, SCPC says that although there has been a positive development regarding ethnic employments, it has become evident in recent years that the rising number of employees has disregarded the real need for them and the spatial conditions available in institutions.

According to SCPC, the application of this tool, where ethnic affiliation is the basic requirement for the job, goes against the merit-system, lacks the value for which it was intended, and is being abused while leading to trading in influence, corrupt behavior and clientilism.

MIA file photo