Mayor Pencho Milkov signed a pact to combat corruption

Friday, 22 July 2022

The Mayor of Ruse Municipality, Pencho Milkov, signed a pact to prevent and counter corruption at the local level. Thus ended the two-day National Conference on "Fighting Vulnerabilities to Corruption at the Municipal Level", organized by the International Republican Institute of the USA (IRI).

The mayor received an invitation to join the initiative in view of the efforts made by the Municipality of Ruse for transparency of management and improvement of administrative services to citizens. The general secretary of Ruse Municipality, Dimitar Genkov, was also present at the conference.

"The fact that a global organization like IRI chose Ruse as one of the 10 municipalities in Bulgaria participating in the survey on transparent governance and vulnerability to corruption motivates us to work even harder. We have created many mechanisms for greater transparency and civic participation, but the results show that we must continue to develop them and make them known so that the people of Rus can benefit from them," said the mayor.

The conference program was opened by Paul McCarthy - IRI Regional Director for Europe, and H.E. Hero Mustafa – US Ambassador to Bulgaria. Mayors and their deputies from another 9 municipalities joined the initiative - Sofia, Vratsa, Burgas, Stara Zagora, Blagoevgrad, Razgrad, Pernik, Kardjali and Veliko Tarnovo. Within the panel "State of transparency and civic participation in municipalities and good practices", each of them shared what has been done in recent years, as well as the work of the administrations on important topics such as transparency, civic participation and anti-corruption policies.

According to the report of the International Republican Institute, the Municipality of Ruse has made transparency its key priority over the past 3 years. The main improvement in the work of the current administration is the conduct of public procurement in an entirely electronic environment with fully open access for citizens. Other strengths are the mayor's regular weekly reports as well as improved features on the official website. It provided the ability to quickly and easily enter signals and proposals from a computer or phone and opened access to the administration's filing system in order to track the development of files in real time.

All municipalities received a recommendation to include more citizens in their public discussions on important topics.

The IRI report will be available to the general public in Bulgarian within a few months.

We remind you that in June a joint meeting was held in the Municipality of Ruse with representatives of IRI and the citizens, where they discussed ways to improve communication between the two sides, conducting subsequent information campaigns explaining the functions of municipal and state institutions and increasing their accountability.

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