Bahrain Mirror: Chairman of the Southern Governorate Municipal Council, Ahmed Al-Ansari, said that Bahrain's municipalities have become "a scapegoat" during the merging process carried out by the government as part of its austerity policies, wondering if "the government is leaning towards reducing the number of municipal employees, when there is at the same time a lot of institutions that suffer from an employee surplus like the Ministry of Agriculture."

"After adding the central districts to the southern governorate, they become in a need of a budget increase, especially after reducing it by 15% and the orientation to reduce it by 20% as of the next year," he added, pointing out that there is a leaning towards "transferring four parts of the municipality to the Ministry of Works, which will complicate the work of the council and disrupt many of its projects," stressing that there are no new projects due to "budget scarcity".

Arabic Issue