Boosting Justice Ministry budget unrealistic, says Prime Minister

Bolstering the budget of the Justice Ministry by 25 percent in order to meet the demands of those involved in last week's courtroom strike is absolutely outside the realm of reality because the money is lacking, said Prime Minister Robert Fico on RTVS's politics show 'O pat minut dvanast' (Five Minutes to Twelve) on Sunday. "Everyone wants higher salaries, but we've done a lot mostly for low income groups. An offer will be made to the Justice Ministry within a short time. Employees of the judiciary are right in that their salaries rank below the nation's average and that's why we'll go step by step [to address the situation]. However, this certainly won't occur overnight", said Fico. The employees of the judiciary have a right to strike, and Fico respects that. "The responsibility of the Cabinet is to seek solutions for the Justice Ministry, which has been underfinanced long term. The ministries of justice and finance have been instructed to seek money at least for a partial solution", he claimed. Also on the show was the leader of the Most-Hid party, Béla Bugár, who pointed out that Smer-SD has been in power for seven out of the past nine years. "You've always called us a hodge-podge [government]. But that hodge-podge in the second government of Mikuláš Dzurinda [2002-06] managed to transfer these employees into state service and improve their salary rates. Under the government of Iveta Radičová [2010-12] we inherited a debt that we had to address. The approach we adopted was to cancel bonuses for judges, so as to have some money with which to compensate at least partially the inadequate income of these clerks", said Bugár.