YUGOSLAV STATE WORKERS SENT TO NEW JOBS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23271, 5 June 1950, Page 5

YUGOSLAV STATE WORKERS SENT TO NEW JOBS

(From Ronald Preston, a Reuter’s Correspondent.) BELGRADE. About 100,000 Yugoslav civil servants have been dismissed from their jobs and directed to new employment in the country’s nationalised industry as the first fruits of Marshal Tito’s new policy of economic decentralisation. Announcing this figure himself, Marshal Tito added that the new. policy is also showing signs of developing greater initiative and creativeness among the rank and file of industry.

The Yugoslav idea is—at least on p a p er — “to expand the self-administra-tion of the people” and reduce to an absolute minimum bureaucracy and red tape which is frankly stated here so far to have been the curse of Commumstryn States. The Yugoslav Communist leaders have stated that they do not wish to repeat the mistakes of the Russians whose “bureaucratic centralism” has, they allege, produced a privileged caste of bureaucrats with a monopolistic hold cn Russian economic and social life. _ This, they say, has strangled, individual initiative, strait-jacketed criticism and reduced democracy to a bare minimum, but there are also thought to be practical, as well as doctrinaire, reasons for the decentralisation of Yugoslav economy begun earlier this year. Marshal Tito himself explained: it has been proved in practice that it is not possible to direct economy successfully from the centre and that it is because of this that difficulties come about. This statement appears to support the view held by informed Western economic observers here that the country’s economic structure, with its ail-cmbrac-ing State control and ambitious fiveyear industrialisation plan, became so complicated that the central administration, hampered by lack of experienced personnel, was unable to cope with it efficiently. It has certainly beer a common impression among toreign businessmen in Belgrade that Yugoslav economy was over-centralised, bureaucratic and inefficient.

Some sort of reorganisation, therefore, became necessary—either more efficient control at the federal level, on the Soviet model, or decentralisation. Decentralisation was chosen, it is believed, both for doctrinal reasons and because, according to Boris Kidrich, the chairman of the Yugoslav Planning Commission, local and republican-run concerns have in practice turned out to be more efficient than those controlled by the Federal Government. The present policy is. an economic parallel to the Government’s successful political solution of the vexed nationalities problem in this country. Under this policy maximum local autonomy is given within the framework of the federal republics. In addition to the re-direction of civil servants to industry which has had the twofold effect of alleviating the manpower shortage here and reduce production costs, decentralisation has so far involved the abolition of eight Federal Ministries.

These were the Ministries of Agriculture. Forestry, Light Industry, Construction, Trade and Distribution. State Supplies. Mining and Electric Power. With their abolition full responsibility for the management of these eight branches of the country's.economy has fallen on the relevant organs of the Republican Governments. Seven new councils are responsible for co-ordinating republican management of the industries at the federal level. Their members include a Federal Minister who is also a member of the central planning commission and representatives from the republics. Republican Governments are also handing over industries formerly under their direct control to regional, district and local authorities. Further decentralisation is expected in the future and informed Yugoslav quarters forecast that it will eventually include foreign trade, which will then be run by each republic individually, and perhaps the Ministry of Interior.

The political police which at present are under the Ministry of the Interior will continue to be Federally controlled under a now Ministry of Internal Security.

One of the world’s most productive underground salt mines lies beneath the city of Detroit in the United States. The 240-acre “city beneath a city” has its own transportation system, maintenance shops, telephone, light, and power lines, and a network of main and side streets.