Head of the PSRM faction in the muncipal council Alexandru Odintsov
The issue is now hinged on the sum of more than 200 million lei, which the council had to approve as transfers to cover the municipality’s expenses for education and the work of municipal enterprises, as well as the employees of the City Hall. On Monday, they demanded salary increases, payment of promised bonuses and even threatened to protest. The Trade Union Association of Chisinau City Hall employees sent a warning to the Chisinau Municipal Council that they will have to resort to a “Japanese strike” if the local councilors do not support their proposal to increase their salaries, which are currently only 6,000 lei.
The head of the Finance Directorate, Olesia Pshenicki, said before the voting that without additional transfers approved by the parliament in the law on the state budget, the municipality will not be able to pay salaries to teachers and employees of organizations financed from the municipal budget. In addition, it is necessary to adjust the electricity expenses for a number of municipal institutions, which were included in the preliminary budget of Chisinau.
For its part, the Ministry of Finance urged the Chisinau City Hall to issue a regulation on the acceptance of transfers for the payment of teachers’ salaries. For this purpose, a simple order of the mayor is enough, “without the need for additional procedures or unjustified delays,” the ministry’s experts said. The clarification was made after the transfer of funds failed on Monday following an order of the Chisinau Municipal Council.
The specialists of the financial ministry said that “the municipality’s mayor’s office should apply the provisions of the legislation promptly and fairly, in the interests of the employees and to ensure the continuity of public services”.
At the same time, the ministry specified that in 2025, the government has allocated about 190.7 million lei for salaries in educational institutions, of which 73.8 million lei for the payment of annual bonuses for 2025. This amount is sufficient to fully cover both salary expenses and related bonuses.
The people tried unsuccessfully to solve the issue at two meetings of the municipal council, on November 24 and 25. As a result, 24 councilors from the MAN party and non-partisans voted in favor of the project. The PSRM faction abstained, while the PDS councilors were absent during the voting, expressing their disagreement with the budget figures by leaving the meeting room.
To unblock the situation, on Tuesday, the head of the Socialist faction, Alexandru Odintsov, proposed to separate the salary expenses from other municipal expenses and to vote for them separately. He said that the faction supports the adoption of a decision on the payment of salaries to Chisinau teachers. At the same time, PSRM councillors sent a request to the Finance Ministry to clarify the legality of the amendments made to the preliminary budget.
It was decided that on Friday, November 28, the amendments to the municipal budget will be presented in two separate drafts, one of which will specify the amounts needed to pay the teachers’ salaries, and the other – the expenses related to the municipal authorities and enterprises.
Alexandru Odintsov specified for Logos Press that the PSRM faction did not vote in favor of the draft decision proposed by the Mayor’s Office, first of all, because it specifies only the amounts and areas where the funds will be directed. “If this money is meant for the salaries of transport workers, it should have been clearly stated in the draft,” he says. – “And it only gives the amount and the direction of ‘transportation,’ with no reference to salaries. We believe that there is a danger of using these funds for other items of expenditure”.
Explaining the PDS position, faction chairwoman Zinaida Popa also noted that the draft did not emphasize teachers’ salaries. “The mayor’s office tried to legalize more than 200 million lei of expenses that were not foreseen in the preliminary budget of the municipality and were spent at the discretion of the mayor’s office for other purposes,” she said. – We believe that these figures can be changed only by a decision of the Municipal Council.
Councillors from the PDS faction insist on alleged abuses in the management of the capital’s provisional budget. They sent their arguments to the National Anti-Corruption Center, explaining that Mayor Ion Ceban, through amendments to the provisional budget, is trying to justify the additional expenditures made during the year, thus putting pressure on the Municipal Council.
There is also disagreement about the legality of allowing the decision on expenditures to be made only at the level of the mayor, as recommended by the representatives of the Ministry of Finance. There is no provision in the legislation on local public finances that such decisions are made at the level of the mayor, but not at the level of the municipal council, says Alexander Odintsov. And Zinaida Popa believes that transfers for teachers’ salaries can be sent to schools by a simple decision of the mayor, while the municipal council should decide on the rest of the costs. “We will decide whether to vote in favor of the project on Friday after we see the document,” she said.
As for the budget for next year 2026, there is no talk about it at all yet. Although the provisions of Article 47 paragraph (2) of the Law on Public Finance and Fiscal Responsibility and Article 21 of the Law on Local Public Finance prescribe that the mayor’s office develops and submits to the local council of the locality the draft budget for the next year by November 20. The local council shall approve it by December 10.
If the draft is not adopted at least 3 days before the end of the budget year, in accordance with the provisions of Article 23 of the Law on Local Public Finance, the budget administrator issues an order to apply the temporary document. This scenario has been repeated for two consecutive years.
