In municipalities, the number of local government employees has increased by 2.5 times, in cities it has increased by 50% while in counties it has doubled.
“The number of local and regional government employees has increased from 10,692 to 19,047, that is, by as much as 78.4%. The same trend can be noticed as regards employment in the state and public sectors, where in the last 13 years outlays for employees have increased by HRK 11.8 billion or 68%,” MP Natalija Martinčević of the People’s Party – Reformists said in parliament, calling for prompt action to change the system.
“The century we live in is a century of informatisation and digitalisation, which enables all users to obtain a whole set of services on their own and that significantly reduces the scope of work of the existing public administration,” she said.
In 2020 there were 19,047 local government employees in 576 local and regional government units (428 municipalities, 127 cities, 20 counties and the City of Zagreb).
An analysis by former public administration minister Dubravka Jurlina Alibegović, a lecturer at the Zagreb Faculty of Economics, shows that in 2019, 2,409 people were employed in county government bodies, 10,777 were employed in city government bodies, and 5,861 in municipal government bodies.
That means that a county administration employs an average 120 people, a city administration close to 85, and a municipal administration 14. Comparing data for 2018 and 2019, Jurlina Alibegović showed that in that period the number of employees in municipal administration rose by as much as 7.3%, the number of county administration employees grew by 2.3% and the number of those working in city administration bodies rose by 11% in 2018 compared to 2017.
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