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Bucharest, May 10 /Agerpres/ - The Government approved on Sunday last a series of guidelines on the decentralization in the fields of health care, local police, youth and sports. In the press conference, given at the end of the Government's meeting, Premier Emil Boc stated that decentralization is aimed at giving tasks, prerogatives, accompanied by financial resources, to the local authorities for a better solution to the problems people are confronted with. "It is actually a way of applying the principle of subsidiarity, which says that decisions must be made by the authorities that are closest to the citizen. In other words, people in the provinces know much better how to solve both problems of health care and problems of education, sports and agriculture than the central authorities in Bucharest," explained the Prime Minister. "Nationwide, we preserve the checking, controlling and national standard competencies, which must be applied everywhere in Romania in a unitary manner and in keeping with the legal provisions," Boc added. The Premier maintained that the decentralization process had entered its final stretch, the Government being in the stage of drawing up the normative documents by which, starting on January 1, 2010, decentralization in the public administration, health care, sports, education, culture, agriculture should effectively come into force. According to Boc, within ten days, the Government will start examining the fields of agriculture, education, culture and employment. "The relevant ministries will produce, in ten days, the list of the normative documents, which will be approved either in the form of the drafts of Government resolutions, or in the form of draft laws as, here too, decentralization should be carried through. The normative documents are being approved by ministries and in ten days they are to be submitted to the Government," concluded the Prime Minister. As for the health care decentralization, Health Minister Ion Bazac announced that the Government approved the decentralization strategy in this field. He presented the principles of decentralization: identifying the level of adequate and accessible services that should reflect the demographic profile of every county, moving the decision and responsibility as close as possible to the place where medical care is given and making people who take decisions directly responsible, especially the chairmen of the county councils and the mayors. According to Bazac, there are four categories of normative documents to be drawn up: the law on decentralization in health care, the law on public health, Government resolutions on the National Institute of Public Health and on the National Institute of Forensic Medicine. He emphasized the fact that, after decentralization, the medical units would be financed from three sources: the national fund of health insurance, the state budget through the agency of the budget of the Ministry of Public Health (MSP) for national health programmes and from the local budgets. The Minister underscored that the national emergency system will continue to be subordinated to the Ministry of Health for three more years. As a result, the ambulance systems, emergency hospital units, emergency wards, as well as the staff employed by the emergency system will be financed from the state's budget. In his turn, Vice-premier Dan Nica, the Minister of Administration and the Interior, stressed that the normative act referring to the setting up of the local police force is an important project, emphasizing that after decentralization there would be two police forces, a local and a national. "The local police will have tasks referring to the defence of order and the citizen's safety in every place, to the defence of the persons' rights and freedoms, to preventing and discovering law violations. The fields in which the local police will work are public order and peace keeping, as well as protection of goods, the safe traffic on public roads, discipline in constructions and street boarding, the protection of the environment and the management of places. This time, the local police will really be at the service of the citizen and especially under the control of every citizen as decentralization is first of all connected to the citizen," said Nica. He mentioned that the local police would be supported by the national police as persons in charge of training the current community policemen will be seconded. The community police will be disbanded. The new regulations aim at the local police having a highly performing training and action level. "In the period to come we will see another dimension, of what it means to genuinely take care of the respective community and be there, through the local police, which will be as close as possible to the European standards", underlined Nica. He said that the law was the result of a consultation with all the associative structures, with the specialist staff of the Ministry of Administration and the Interior, with the Ministry of Finance, but also with representatives of non-governmental organizations and relevant parliamentary commissions. As regards decentralization in the field of youth and sports, the Minister in charge Monica Iacob-Ridzi underscored that the taking up of the activities of local interest as concerns sports and youth will be made gradually at the request of the local public administration and that only high performance sports will stay with the ministry. "During negotiations with the associative structures I decided to keep on the high performance sports into the ministry's administration, going to decentralize the remaining sport activities, and youth activities respectively", she added.
[Source:
Romanian National News Agency
AGERPRES
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