New Ministries Will Increase Expenditures, Says IRL Heavyweight
IRL MP Tõnis Palts, who was the Mayor of Tallinn on two occasions, says the new coalition's plan to restructure government ministries will have the opposite effect o increasing efficiency.
“Dropping the Regional Affairs Minister seat just when society has began to come around and understand that what the current minister (Siim-Valmar) Kiisler was trying to push through was a modern reform and halting that is leading Estonia to the level of Ukraine,” Palts told Delfi today.
He said a cost-cutting measure would have been to eliminate, not create new ministries, with regional affairs and agriculture already ripe for merging as the Ministry of Agriculture is already heavily involved with regional policies.
Bills on the changes must also be approved, increasing the work-load of the government during an international crisis, Palts said.
The Reform Party and the Social Democrats have unveiled a plan to create two new ministries, splitting the posts of the minister of economic affairs and the minister of social affairs.
The ministry of economic affairs will gain a minister of economic affairs and infrastructure and the minister of foreign trade and entrepreneurship, while the seat of the minister of social affairs will be split into the minister for health and labor and the minister for social welfare.