Today, Democracy Plus (D +) held a press conference presenting its findings regarding two topics firstly on hiring through service contracts and appointing people on acting duties in the civil service, and secondly the policy making at the national level, with focus on strategies.

Regarding short term contracts and appointments to acting positions, Democracy Plus has sent 132 requests for access to public documents to 132, out of which it received responses from 75 responses. Based on these answers, the current situation is as follows:

• According to responses provided by 75 institutions there were 777 service contracts in 2018 out of which 164 have surpassed the legal limitation of six months. This number would be even higher if the remaining 57 institutions would have responded;
• The number of service contract or people hired through these contracts is higher than the number of regular recruitment processes (In 2016: 645 were regular recruitments and 861 recruitment through service contracts, in 2017: 723 regular recruitments and 991 service contracts);
• Most of them were contracted without recruitment procedures, hence being employed without any procedure. Most of them are engaged in regular positions in the civil service (which is prohibited by the law) and not for specific work (which is required by law);
• The majority of Acting Appointments cases are longer than the legal term of three (3) months substituting a civil servant, while those positions are either held by the same person or rotated from one official to another every three (3) months;
• Engagements through short term contracts are paid from the budget category of goods and services. If we take as average the number of short term contracts per year for about a thousand people and a salary not higher than 400 euros per month, it is estimated that about 4.8 million euros have been spent per year for these contracts from the category of goods and services;
• The number of Acting Appointments at the central and local level, in most cases is beyond the legal limitation: 122 cases as Acting Appointments are out of legal limitation of 3 months, whereas, 93 other cases are within the legal term.
• For 2018, according to 75 responses, Ministries with the highest number of service contracts are: the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport with 134 cases, Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport with 87 cases, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Rural Development with 24 cases.
• Regarding municipalities, the highest number of these contracts are for the following municipalities: Prizren with 85 cases, Gjilan with 50 and Peja with 44 cases.

Meanwhile, in regards to the second topic of policy-making at the national level, focusing on strategies, in October, D+ issued a report analyzing the strategic documents approved by the Government during the period of 2012-2017, identifying a large number of problems, that were also raised today at the conference, such as:

• A large number of approved strategies within a year;
• Non-compliance with secondary legislation for drafting strategic documents;
• Lack of monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of strategies by the responsible and implementing institutions;
• The large number of claims deposited at OSP- Office of Strategic Planning to draft new strategies, despite the fact that a large number of strategies are still active