Bitola municipality expands number of sectors and departments in administration

The Municipal Council in Bitola has approved a reorganisation of the town administration that increases the number of sectors and departments. Under the new structure, the municipality will expand from six to ten sectors and from 19 to 27 departments.

Local opposition councillors warned the move will create many new managerial posts and accused the ruling team of opening space for party appointments. They argued the change will enlarge the administrative payroll and divert resources from visible public services.

“New sector managers are being introduced. It will get to the point where one third of the employees in the Municipality of Bitola will hold some kind of managerial post; we'll have around 40 heads of sectors and departments... I assure you that this will further burden the municipal administration with more than 200,000 euros, which I believe, at a time when our problems with potholes in the streets and reliable public transport are not solved, is not appropriate. We'll end up, as the joke goes, 'deputy of the deputy, deputy-director of the director' — and now that may happen in the Municipality of Bitola,” said councilor Petar Nikolovski of SDSM.

Mile Trajkovski, a councilor from the independent civic initiative Poinaku, said that under the current staffing plan there were about 20 managerial positions and that the new organisational scheme raises that number to 38.

Officials from the municipal administration defended the reorganisation, saying it aligns the internal services with recent legal changes and aims to reduce concentration of responsibilities within a single service or under a single manager. They argued the new layout will distribute tasks more evenly across units.

The decision now moves to implementation at the administrative level, where municipal departments must adapt their internal job descriptions and reporting lines to the enlarged sectoral structure.

Photo: SDK.MK)