The Skopje City Council adopted a decision reducing the number of planned new hires in the city's public enterprises and institutions. Mayor Orce Gjorgjievski immediately presented it as a turning point: "drastically" fewer new hires.

According to the City, priority will go to field and operational jobs: drivers at the JSP bus company, workers and drivers at the public utility "Komunalna Higiena" (the city's sanitation company), and other operational staff where they're genuinely lacking. Administrative positions are being cut to a minimum.

"Today, at the session of the Skopje City Council, a decision was adopted that puts an end to decades of bad practice - the uncontrolled build-up of administration and the extra burden on the city budget. For the first time ever, all public enterprises and institutions are planning fewer new hires. At the same time, the total number of employees, especially in public enterprises, is being reduced on legal grounds," Gjorgjievski wrote on Facebook.

The direction sounds sensible. Skopje needs drivers and people to clean its streets more than it needs yet another clerk. But there isn't a single number in any of the statements. How many hires were planned before, how many are planned now, how many people work in the city's companies and how many will leave "on legal grounds"? Without those figures, "drastically" is an adjective, not a fact.

If the reform is real, the table should be public. Then Skopje residents could work out for themselves whether decades of padding the payroll have really ended - or just changed their name.