Corruption Watchdog Criticises Serbia Over Hiring Practices

Transparency Serbia, part of the global corruption watchdog, filed a lawsuit against the Government on Monday after it failed to provide the NGO with information on the hiring of officials in the public sector.

The NGO had requested the information based on the Law on Access to Information, but Belgrade failed to hand over the data within the deadline.

Serbia has been accused for many years of appointing and hiring public officials based in large part on their party membership, and the government launched a reform in 2000 aimed at cutting down on the practice.

The reform of the state administration that began in 2000 aimed at depoliticising the hiring process through open application calls -- a transparent competition for civil servant positions.

Nemanja Nenadic, programme director of Transparency Serbia, says that there were no criteria for hiring state officials until 2005, when the Law on Civil Servants was adopted. The law envisages a public call for applicants for every position in the public sector.

According to Nenadic, since then, these calls for applicants have often been delayed, exceeded deadlines and left uncompleted.

"This is all related to the issue of de-politicisation which has not been completed by the deadline," Nenadic noted.

Transparency Serbia requested the information from the government in an effort to evaluate the success of the government's efforts to reform its hiring practices.

According to the organisation's estimates, some 11,000 jobs and about 25,000 top positions, from the local to the state level, are effectively the property of the parties.