Norwegian municipalities hire 1,000 new bureaucrats each year
The number of employees in the municipal bureaucracy has increased from 58,000 to 63,500 between 2015 and 2019. The Center Party (SP) believes this is due to the municipal reform.
“There is a consulting bonanza going on right now in Norway – and one of the biggest drivers behind this is the government’s merger mania – is the municipal reform or the at least as unsuccessful regional reform,” Willfred Nordlund (SP) told newspaper Nationen.
He believes that the middle management level, the communication departments, and the apparatus that provides service to the management groups are growing. Furthermore, the consulting expenses are skyrocketing.
Minister of Local Government and Modernization Nikolai Astrup (H), for his part, pointed out that the statistics are from 2019 before most municipal mergers came into force on January 1, 2020.
“The figures that Nordlund used also show that the greatest growth in bureaucracy is in larger cities governed by red-green parties,” Astrup noted.
Source: © NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today / #NorwayTodayNews
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