PM: Wages of ministerial officials may depend on performance

Prague, Feb 7 (CTK) - Prime Minister Jan Fischer does not rule out that salaries of deputies and other top officials at ministries will not be directed by tables but by the performance of the individual ministries, Fischer said in discussion programme Questions on Czech TV Sunday.

The former Czech government's economic council NERV earlier also recommended to tie the salaries to the ministries' performance and savings.

"I can imagine it very well. Performance is monitored at companies and factories, while for ministries it has not been the case for a long time. But the word applies to ministries as well, and is even measurable there," Fischer said.

Potential changes in salaries at ministries will be part of austerity measures which the government to emerge from the upcoming general election will have to respect, Fischer added.

Server iHNed.cz writes that another wage adjustment which the Finance Ministry plans in its Exit Strategy are long-term cuts in the amount of money designed for wages of civil servants. The budget should be one percent lower at least until the year 2013.

"The proposed wage cut for civil servants is just for orientation at the time being. We want to say that when cutting operating costs, we should also look at the costs of the wages of civil servants," says the server, citing Janota.

The government also has ways out of the crisis which it will further discuss.

"We have ways out of the crisis, 75 concrete tasks we would like to tackle, and many of them could be implemented during our mandate. We will discuss them at tomorrow's government meeting," Fischer noted.

Fischer believes that it is impossible to be coming constantly with more and more austerity packages.

"We cannot live here with a festival of packages," he noted, adding that a longer-term programme to serve as a base for the individual governments' decision is a must.

Fischer also touched upon proposed short-term measures on which reps of the government, employers and unions agreed on Tuesday.

Out of the 38 proposed points, the current government can, for example, approve raising of share capital of the Czech Export Bank (CEB) and the Export Guarantee and Insurance Company (EGAP), including its insurance funds.

Faster gaining of subsidies from European funds is also important. Regional operating programmes have no problems with drawing money from the EU, Fischer said, adding that there are problems, for example, by programmes for subsidies into R&D.

"We also suffer by the fact that there are too many operating programmes, which makes our life incredibly complicated," Fischer said.

The Local Development Ministry wants to submit to the government by end-February a set of legislative measures to accelerate and simplify gaining of the EU money.

"I expect a lot from the ministry's document," Fischer said, noting that it had to be considered whether or not to move subsidies among the individual programmes to where they will make more sense in connection with the anti-crisis measures.

According to the latest information, the Local Development Ministry does not rule out a similar step.

Fischer also said in Questions that he wanted to meet with the unions who complain about new rules taxing employee benefits. He wants to talk about further course of action concerning this topic with Finance Minister Eduard Janota as well.

In particular transport unions are against the potential changes as regards the benefits. On Friday, they did not rule out that any time after February 22, strike is possible in transport and many other sectors of the Czech economy.