The Prague City Hall will lay off, over a hundred officials will leave
“Prague lost money not only because of the coronavirus crisis, but mainly because of the tax crisis, which draws two billion crowns from the coffers every year. Therefore, we want to save on operating costs and with that we will join the fact that we want to optimize the number of employees of the municipality, “said the mayor of Prague Zdeněk Hřib (Pirates).
The redundancies will be gradual, eventually affecting up to ten percent of current employees. By the end of this year, it will be seven percent across all municipal unions. By the end of 2022, another three percent of people will be fired as a result of the office’s digitization.
The municipality should thus save around 180 million crowns a year. According to Hřiba, no further organizational changes are planned due to the redundancies.
In February and March this year, the directors of individual departments of the municipality prepared and submitted audits of their departments, where their task was to rationalize the number of positions. In April, these materials were discussed with them by the municipality’s management, the document says.
Mayor Hřib told ČTK in May that the downsizing of the office should be associated with the improvement of internal processes, which simplifies the implementation of current agendas with the help of digitization. In relation to citizens, it is to help, for example, the launched Portal of Prague, through which people in Prague can gradually solve the expanding summary tasks, for which they have so far had to go to office.
The document approved by the council is still being discussed by Prague’s deputies.
A 30-day deadline now applies, when steps are being taken to eliminate jobs and when everything is being discussed with the unions. After the deadline has been reimbursed, the Office will start dealing with specific dismissals with the staff concerned, due to redundancy. The dismissed employee will be paid severance pay, which for some will reach up to seven times the salary.