About 900 mayors and heads of districts today participated in a festivity dedicated to the day of local autonomy and local public administration employee. 

In a speech given at the event’s inauguration, Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita said that the significant progress in the European integration process was due including to the involvement of local public authorities (APL).

„One of our common achievements is that we resisted a wave of crises and we managed to change together the historical way of Moldova. Both the government and the local public administration have the same goal – to improve the people’s living. The government I lead has managed to solve more problems which were put aside for years. At the same time, we launched programmes which bring us development in each village or town. Through the European Village Programme, we provided funds for local infrastructure projects, expected by people for years – repair of schools, new illumination systems or sports objects and leisure spaces, which is to make the life more attractive in rural communities,’’ the prime minister said.

In her speech, the head of the parliament’s commission for public administration, Larisa Voloh, emphasized the legislative initiatives approved in the last two years, which settled the historical problems in APL’s work, non-solved during 30 years.

„We want to build prosperous settlements, provide residents with opportunities of labour and access to qualitative services; we want the people to remain at home and those who left to return, to invest in the sustainable development of settlements and to have motivated civil servants,’’ Larisa Voloh noted.

The head of the Congress of Local Authorities from Moldova (CALM), Tatiana Badan, thanked the government for the revival of the work of the Parity Commission for Decentralization, after a break of 6 years. Also, the CALM head said that a good cooperation with the government and parliament would continue to bring benefits to APL’s activity.

„I want us to have, in the long run, as many as possible mechanisms for settling residents’ problems autonomously and efficiently,’’ Tatiana Badan stressed.

Head of the European Union’s Delegation to Moldova Jānis Mažeiks, Ambassador of Romania to Moldova Cristian-Leon Turcanu, U.S. Ambassador to Moldova Kent Doyle Logsdon, Deputy Director of the Swiss Cooperation Office in Moldova Vesna Roch and Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Moldova Dima Al-Khatib came up with congratulatory messages for APL employees.

The event was organized by the government, with the support of development partners within the My Community Programmme of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), I Get Involved Project of the Swiss Cooperation Office in Moldova and UNDP Moldova.