RO transport minister promises again to eliminate clientelism from state companies

Transport minister Sorin Grindeanu announced that he instructed five companies subordinated to his ministry to open calls for hiring "professional" managing board members, Agerpresreported.

There's a milestone placed at the end of the year in the Recovery and Resilience Plan on this, he implied.

The candidates will have a 30-day deadline to submit their documents, one can infer from the ambiguous Facebook post filed by minister Grindeanu. In other words, he instructed the politically-appointed management of the said companies to prepare their own replacement with "professional" (meaning, other than politically-appointed) managers.

Actually, Grindeanu's statement is even more ambiguous: it is not clear whether candidates, other than incumbent managers, are going to be invited.

"[Within 30 days], the members of the Boards of Directors must submit all the necessary documents for five companies: CNAIR, CNIR, Metrorex, CFR Infrastructura and CFR Călători."

Not surprisingly, a similar announcement was launched by the minister in March, with no results. In March, minister Grindeanu - using the same ambiguous wording - implied that the subordinate companies would eventually enforce the long-overdue ordinance OUG 109/2011 - on the professional management in the state-owned companies.

"We prepared all the companies subordinate to 109 (ordinance on the corporate governance of public enterprises - no)," said minister Grindeanu, quoted by Economica.net.

OUG 109/2011 implies the involvement of HR companies and, employed in the case of other companies, generated mixed results, sometimes perplexing: the independent heads hunters came up with the same politically-affiliated candidates.

Coming back to Grindeanu's promise to end the clientelism in the state companies, it is not clear whether this time the Government plans to enforce OUG 109. What is worth being noted is the deadline included in the PNRR: the end of the year.

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