As Exit has reported the last few months, the lack of vetting funding and personnel has started to weigh down not only on the speed of the vetting procedures, but also on their quality, with even “stupid” mistakes creeping in.
During the next session on October 4, Parliament is expected to discuss a request of the Independent Qualification Commission (KPK). In a letter dated September 20, KPK chair Genta Tafa asks Parliament to include the KPK personnel in a pay raise for civil servants issued in March 2017, as well as a number of additional employees: 8 economic experts, 2 specialists of the court secretariat, 2 translators, 2 archivists, a cleaning lady, and a public procurement officer.
The additional economic experts, Tafa explains, are necessary to make sure that each of the 12 juridical experts can work with a single economic experts. Currently, there are only 4 economic experts, who therefore currently each deal with at least 3 simultaneous vetting cases at any given time.
Tafa explains the request for additional personnel as follows:
These are the result of the great workload of the Commission, but also considering the fact that when parliamentary decision 93/2017 was approved we still didn’t have a clear view on the volume of work and its intensity.
Tafa’s statement here is remarkable, considering the fact that national and international experts had actually provided a study of the amount of funding and personnel needed, but that the the Socialist majority, through decision 93/2017 approved only 60% of the vetting institutions employees.
Whereas Natasha Mulaj, chair of the Special Appeals Chamber had stated in September 2017 during a hearing of the Legal Affairs Committee that 185 employees were needed, the Socialist majority approved only 110. So the actual workload had been accurately predicted, it is just that Parliament chose to ignore it and therefore stifle a speedy vetting process.
Meanwhile, Public Commissioner Florian Ballhysa and Darjel Sina have requested in a separate letter to Parliament 5 extra personnel members (on top of the current 8) to deal with the large number of appeals that are filed to the Special Appeals Chamber.
The 21 extra personnel members that Tafa, Ballhysa, and Sina now have requested from Parliament are still 54 short of the number envisioned by the expert committee in 2017.
