Prague, March 14 (CTK) – The Czech cabinet of Andrej Babis (ANO), which keeps working after its resignation, approved further personnel changes at the government and other state offices today, government spokeswoman Barbora Peterova has said.
As of the beginning of April, 14 civil service posts and six other jobs will be cancelled at the Government Office. However, 13 new posts are to be created as some agenda will be transferred from the Government Office to the environment and industry and trade ministries.
The personnel changes also afflict other ministries and state offices, including the General Financial Directorate.
While civil servant posts fall under the civil service law, the other posts are filled under the Labour Code.
The government approved further changes less than a week after the opposition unsuccessfully proposed a debate on the excessive personnel changes carried out by Babis’s caretaker government.
Compared to them, the latest changes in a number of institutions are mostly minor.
However, the Reconstruction of State civic group pointed to significant changes within the General Financial Directorate.
“The caretaker government wants to set up there a new section of general director and a new post of deputy general director without justifying the steps. At the same time, it wants to establish a new security section of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) without giving a reason for this,” lawyer Petr Bouda, an analyst of the Reconstruction of State, said.
Babis’s government carried out broad personnel changes at ministries and other state offices and state-run facilities shortly after its appointment at the end of last year.
It cancelled 14 sections at the Government Office and ministries, including 23 positions of civil servants and 50 other jobs. Babis announced then that he expected further changes in March.
Some of the sacked senior officials, including deputy ministers, filed legal complaints against their dismissals, according to media.
Last week, deputies were in dispute about personnel changes pushed through by Babis’s cabinet for almost four hours. A part of the opposition criticised them and called on the government to restrain itself in this respect. Babis and the other ministers dismissed the criticism.
However, an extraordinary lower house session, initiated by six opposition deputy groups, did not take place since its programme was not approved because of the votes of ANO, the far-right anti-EU Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) and the Communists (KSCM).