The National Anticorruption Center (CNA) in the first months of the year experienced a mass exodus of staff owing mainly to the low salaries, the institution’s director ViorelChetraru said during a fact-finding visit to the CNA organized by Transparency International Moldova, IPN reports.

ViorelChetraru said the employees quit even if the new strategy for reforming the CNA envisions that the average pay of a beginning employee should be minimum €500. As a result of the reformation, the Center remained with 350 persons out of 576, who were reemployed as a result of performance assessment.

The director stated that the employees are hired after they are subjected to strict assessment, including polygraph testing, monitoring of the lifestyle and integrity tests. “Despite putting the vacancies up for contest, there weren’t many applicants,” said ViorelChetraru. No person from outside applied for some of the posts.

Anticorruption experts from the NGO and governmental sectors and the mass media from a number of states, including Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia,Latvia, Georgia and Romania, made a fact-finding visit to the CNA on March 18. According to Transparency InternationalMoldova, the aim of the event was to collect facts and learn from the positive practices of different states in preventing and combating corruption.