Gyeonggi Province Gov. Choo Mi-ae said Saturday that the province is shouldering most of the labor costs for national-level fire service personnel, calling for urgent fiscal reform to support locally driven growth.
Choo made the remarks in a Facebook post, saying the central government should be covering national civil servant salaries but that "the reality is the exact opposite."
She said the number of fire service civil servants stationed in Gyeonggi Province had grown 1.4 times while costs including labor had risen 1.8 times. "The province is bearing most of the more than 1.5 trillion won in expenses for approximately 11,000 national-level fire service civil servants," she said.
Choo said labor costs alone amount to about 1.1 trillion won, yet the central government contributes only 80 billion won. Of the remaining roughly 400 billion won in operational expenses, she said, the central government provides just 30 billion won.
"The time has come to reform a structure in which the province is paying more than 1 trillion won in national civil servant labor costs on behalf of the central government," she said. "Fiscal reform and revenue structure reform are urgently needed."
Meanwhile, Choo officially declared a "fiscal emergency" for Gyeonggi Province on Wednesday.
She said the previous provincial administration under then-Gov. Kim Dong-yeon had allocated budgets for a significant number of public welfare and essential projects for only nine months of this year rather than the full 12, citing insufficient funds. "I was briefed on this critical fact and the specific fiscal reality only after taking office," she said.
Choo said what concerned her even more was that the severity of the fiscal situation was not being shared or fully recognized even within the provincial civil service.
sjpark@heraldcorp.com
