Today in Belgrade, the Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities and the Council of Europe signed the Contract on the Execution of the Project “Improvement of Human resources in the Local self-government – Second Phase”, financed by EU and the Council of Europe, and implemented by SCTM and the Council of Europe Office in Belgrade, in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government.
Branko Ružić, Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, emphasized the importance of the project which affirms professional development and training programmes and local self-government units.
“Second phase of the project is an important step in the provision of the necessary support to municipalities and towns in further improvement of human resources, and I believe that activities planned in the project will considerably contribute to raising capacities of local self-governments to provide better services to citizens”, stated Ružić.
He added that the previous phase gave enormous support to the establishment of the civil servant system on the local level through trainings, as well as through specific 35 models of acts for a more efficient and better implementation of modern principles of human resource management in local self-government.
Tobias Flessenkemper, Head of the Belgrade Office of the Council of Europe, said that the meeting is an indicator of the way that the Council of Europe functions, providing support to local partners. “Today, we are on the premises of SCTM, which represents local self-governments, which points out to our desire to directly support towns and municipalities in Serbia, enhance capacities of towns and municipalities and leave behind a heritage of SCTM, which would continue good cooperation with them even after the completion of the project”, said Flessenkemper.
“Cooperation with the Ministry also shows the efforts of the Government of Serbia to implement standards of the Council of Europe. Dialogue with all included parties was improved so we could improve standards in local self-governments, added the Head of the Belgrade Office of the Council of Europe.
Dušanka Golubović, the President of SCTM and the Mayor of Sombor, stated that pilot local self-governments which were beneficiaries of support packages relating to human resource management had had most benefits in the previous phase of the project, and that, thanks to the success of the first part, we were now starting the second phase of the project.
Through the first phase of the project owns and municipalities in Serbia “Improvement of Human resources in the Local Self-Government”, towns and municipalities in Serbia received significant support in the establishment of human resource management and vocational training of local civil servants. The first phase of the project provided support to all local self-governments in Serbia in capacity building for human resource management and building a professional development system. The project will last for the next three years, and its total value is 4 million EUR.