The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Romania wants to significantly increase the number of personnel, according to a draft government decision put up for public debate analyzed by Economedia.ro. The project provides for the supplementation with 8,500 new posts, of which 146 soldiers (121 officers, 25 petty officers) and 8,400 civilian personnel.
If the project is approved, the hirings will start this year and run until 2025. The project estimates a financial impact of personnel expenses in the state budget to be on average 264 million lei annually, or about 55 million euros. Of these amounts, 187 million lei will be additional expenses to the state budget, while the rest going back to the budget in the form of social insurance and income tax.
The year with the greatest budgetary impact will be 2025, when the state budget will have to bear an additional expenditure of 340 million lei.
Most of the new employees will be assigned to the General Inspectorate for Emergency Situations (IGSU) and its subordinated structures, according to the memorandum “Recovery of the Inspectorate”, approved by Prime Minister Florin Cîțu and quoted in the note substantiating the project.
Two years ago, Secretary of State Raed Arafat said the staff shortage at IGSU was about 40,000. Firefighters alone needed 13,000 more people. Now the structure has about 30,000 employees,
The Inspectorate is led by Major General Dan-Paul Iamandi, seconded by Colonels Cristian Radu, Miron-Adrian Chichisan and Benone-Gabriel Duduc. The Minister of Interior is the liberal Lucian Bode.
According to its website, the fundamental objective of the IGSU’s activity is to streamline the prevention and management of emergencies, in order to keep risks under control and ensure the normality of life of human communities and is achieved through a multitude of prevention activities, and intervention for firefighting, release and first aid SMURD, the rescuing of people and limitation of damage caused by floods, landslides, seismic movements, epidemics, epizootics, snowfall, drought, assistance to people in critical situations, intervention in technological accidents, radiological, nuclear, biological or other natural or man-made disasters.
The General Inspectorate and the territorial structures are composed of 42 operational centers and over 280 operational subunits.
Translated from Romanian by Service For Life S.R.L.