It has been a month since the 2024 budget was adopted, so the Ministry of the Interior and other state bodies should already have prepared HR plans for the current year. The HR plan is an important document as it provides an overview of the number of employees in the ministry, including the Police Directorate, planned hiring, and projections on the number of those retiring.
There has been much public discussion about the large number of police officers who will retire under favourable conditions, and how Montenegro will face a shortage of police personnel. However, precise data is not available in public documents, and the personnel plan, which should offer insight into such data, has not been prepared for three years. At the beginning of December, Institute Alternative called on the Ministry of the Interior to start preparing this document on time and fulfill its legal obligation.
On the other hand, we do not have precise data on the number of employees. The number of employees is not included in the Ministry’s annual reports, nor is it found in key strategic documents, such as the “Human Resources Management Strategy in the Police Directorate 2019-2024” and the “Police Directorate Development Strategy 2023-2026.”
To make an overview of employees over the past six years, we had to consult five different sources. According to available data, the number of employees in the Police Directorate has varied from year to year, with the highest number of employees recorded in 2021. However, it is not known which positions experienced an increase, and whether it involved police personnel or an increase in administration. The list of employees provided to Institute Alternative does not cover the total number of employees in certain organisational units of the MUP, as these are classified, meaning the actual number of employees is higher than stated in the table.
According to the internal organisation and systematisation regulations of the Ministry of the Interior and the Police Directorate, which are publicly available, the number of positions has increased year by year. However, even these regulations do not provide complete data, as information for certain organisational units of the Police Directorate is classified.
Data sources: Plan for increasing the number of police officers for 2018, personnel plans of the Ministry of the Interior and the Police Directorate for 2019 and 2020, European Commission’s Report for 2021, list of employees for 2022 and 2023 obtained through the right to free access to information, and the Government’s Information on the overview of the situation in the Ministry as of October 2023.
Organisational units for which the number of systematised positions is unknown: Department for Special Investigative Methods, Department for Witness Protection, Department for Criminal Intelligence, Group for Combating Arms and Explosives Smuggling and Crimes Against Other Goods Protected by International Law, Financial Intelligence Sector, and part of the Counterterrorism Unit.
