News

Cutting down the position “expert on ethnic and demographic issues” in district administrations as well as a permanent process of resignation of such experts from this position decreases significantly the administrative capacity for implementation of Roma integration policy. According to a decision of the Council of Ministers cut down in the administration was realized in May 2008. In many district administrations it caused cutting down of the position “expert on ethnic and demographic issues”. At the same time, during the last several months exprets on ethnic and demographic issues in certain district administrations left their position because of the low payment and because the status of some of them was decreased from expert to specialist without reliable reasons. The ordinary practice is not to assign new experts on their places.

As Deputy chair of the National Council for Cooperation on Ethnic and Demographic Issues Deyan Kolev required information about the present state of the position “district expert on ethnic and demographic issues”. The information prepared by Ethnic and Demographic Issues Directorate reveales that only 13 district administrations (out of 28) have such experts and the rest are experts in another field. Administrations in districts with numerous Roma population (such as Sliven, Vidin, Razgrad and so on) do not have expert on ethnic and demographic issues at present although they had had such expert for many years. In this way the administrative capacity for implementation of Roma integration policy at regional level is close to zero.

List with the district experts on ethnic and demographic issues on May 2008  in Bulgarian could be downloaded here