Central Heating - A Challenge for City Mayors at This Time of the Year
Poiana Braşov, 25 September 2009 ■ The intention to further decentralize public services in strategic domains like education, healthcare or public order, without an objective assessment which should constantly reflect, with statistical data, the local authorities' effective capacity to take over and manage those functions, is quite risky and may cause serious discontinuities in their being provided to the population. The data concerning several key utilities managed in 2008 by City Halls of Municipalities, such as water and sewerage, household heating, management of green areas, and the community police, point mainly to a tendency to preserve rather than modernize the quality of these services and to a reduced capability to access grant funds for their development. The Ministries' programs do not rely on systematic assessments of how local services are managed, and are designed more to deal with extreme situations rather than to direct resources towards a strategic modernization of those services. The municipalities' efforts vary widely from one zone to another and the national policies on public services do not take local features sufficiently into consideration.
During a debate with Mayors of Municipalities, deputy mayors, directors and local councilmen, held in Braşov on 24 - 25 September this year, the Institute for Public Policy (IPP) issued this year's assessment of the costs and quality standards of the public services managed by county-seat Municipalities in Romania. The discussion was related to the government's interest to set efficiency standards for local services, and provided a realistic assessment of the plans for furthering the devolution of services to the local administrations.
As against 2008, the proportion the county-seat Municipalities residents who are connected to the water supply and sewerage system has grown by 1 per cent, and the country average has reached 93%. The residents of Vaslui (61%), Baia Mare (74%), Sfântu Gheorghe (78%), Târgovişte (79%), Slatina (81%), Miercurea Ciuc (83%), Bacău (84%), Slobozia (88%), Alba Iulia (89%), and Oradea (89%) are still facing problems which the local authorities must address the same way as other mayors across the country have.
Growth is also visible in the public lighting service, from 87% in 2007 to 93% in 2008. County-seat Municipalities still exist in Romania which had a local public lighting coverage below the national average in 2008: Miercurea Ciuc - 52% of the streets had public lighting, Slatina - 59%, Botoşani - 79%.
The biggest challenge facing City Halls in Municipalities in 2008 was the central heating system. The average national loss in the central heating system stood at 26%. The biggest energy losses in the system were recorded in the municipalities of Vaslui - 53% and Reşiţa, 51%.
Waste is not systematically collected in a selective way in Romania and the recycling of waste collected in this way poses a national challenge. The Municipalities of Buzău, Călăraşi, Botoşani and Oradea said they had no beneficiaries for this selective collection.
The national average age of the public transport vehicles fleet (buses) was around 11 years in 2008. Yet there are Municipalities where buses as old as 40 years are still in use (Miercurea Ciuc). In this context there are voices asking for State subsidies for the modernization of this service, which today is inefficient in many places in the country.
Our Municipalities lie far behind the minimum 26 sq.m. per person of green area required by the European Union. The national average of this indicator in Romania in 2008 was 9.6 sq.m. per person. The Municipalities with the largest green area as to population size are: Suceava, with 22.2 sq.m. per person, Vaslui, with 22 sq.m. per person, Brăila, with 19.6 sq.m. per person, Călăraşi, with 19.2 sq.m. per person and Braşov, with 19 sq.m. per person. At the opposite end there are Municipalities like Craiova, with only 0.3 sq.m. per person, and Focşani, with 0.7 sq.m. per person.
In 2008, the average number of fines issued by a community policeman was 14.64 fines/year; the largest number was reported in Constanţa, where each such policeman issued an average 97.97 fines during one year, while the lowest number was issued in Călăraşi - 0.71 fines/policeman/year.
All the above figures are mainly derived from public information that the Institute for Public Policy require from all Municipal City Halls every year. This year, the IPP survey was part of the project An efficient public administration means quality public services for citizens, financed through The Financing Program of the Governments of Iceland, Principality of Liechtenstein and Norway, through The Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area.
The quality of the data managed by City Halls continues to be poor, hence the conclusion that decisions in the Romanian administration are not made on the basis of objective evaluations but rather as quick fixes for the solution of a crisis. The Institute for Public Policies' endeavors are all the more justified at present, as they cause the Romanian administration to move to an efficient, modern working style.
IPP is the only nongovernmental organization that monitors the evolution of public services on an annual basis, pressing authorities in Romania to release the information on the costs and results of the management of those services, getting mayors, local councilmen and Ministers accustomed to the idea that they are answerable to the electorate for how they manage the public purse.
For more information please contact Elena Iorga, Program Manager, and Adrian Moraru, IPP Deputy Director at 021 212 3126, E-mail: elena@ipp.ro and adrian@ipp.ro or cellular +40-722-166-888 and +40-724 237 229.
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