Local Governances of T.R.N.C discussed

Academicians of European University of Lefke (EUL) Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences represented EUL at the “Internatıonal Conference on Good Local Governance” which was conducted by Selcuk Municipality Social Sciences Research Society (SoBiAD).

Members of Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences Assoc. Prof. Dr. Bülent Evre and Assist. Prof. Dr. Şükrü Mert Karcı’s “E-Municipality in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” titled article and Prof. Dr. Okan Veli Şafaklı’s “A Study on Budget Performance of Municipalities in TRNC” titled article were presented with the participation of the academicians. Both articles approached local governments in the TRNC, coming to the agenda with possible discourses of reform nowadays.

Şafaklı gave information about his article titled “A Study on Budget Performance of Municipalities in TRNC” which he presented at the conference and pointed out that the budget performance of the municipalities in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was analyzed within the study, and the legislation and the current implementations of the budget processes of the municipalities and especially the foreseen and realized budget figures of 2015 were examined in this frame.

Şafaklı said that, “Although municipalities are primarily involved in municipalities, municipalities do not provide pre-budget plans and programs because they are not mandated supervisory agencies” and added that since there is no legal and institutional structure that will allow the preparation of the prepared budgets in accordance with certain principles and the examination of the conformity as opposed to other public institutions,  differences arise between the foreseen and realized budget figures. In his study, Şafaklı touched upon the sustainability of financial structure of the municipalities, ensuring the autonomous structure to the municipalities, and the sustainability of financial structures of municipalities without the need for state contributions. Pointing out that most of the revenues of municipalities is wasted on staff expenses’, Şafaklı said that, for this reason the municipalities are not able to create the necessary resources for investments that would increase life quality of the society and added that measures should be taken in terms of administrative, legal, institutional and supervision to increase the budget performance of the municipalities.

In his joint study titled ““E-Municipality in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” Karcı approached the e-municipality infrastructure and activities of the TRNC municipalities within the scope of evaluating e-municipality applications in the TRNC.  Karcı said that, in the study, the extent to which the municipalities in the TRNC met the requirements of e-municipality was analyzed methodologically within the framework of the meta-synthesis model. Şafaklık said that, web sites presence, interaction, transaction, transformation and e-democracy elements of municipalities were evaluated, and added that the sample of the research covered all the municipalities in the TRNC and the basic data sources were the web sites of the TRNC municipalities. Karcı stated that the data obtained in the study were evaluated at the level of each municipality and at the general level within the frame of the analytical model for e-municipality in the world.