In the lecture hall of Tetovo Clinical Hospital today, health workers who have spent more than a decade on freelance service contracts received permanent employment decisions. That is good news and there is no need to qualify it - people who spent years protesting over late wages and non-renewed contracts finally get a regulated status.

The question is who handed the papers to them.

Two co-chairs of a ruling party handing out appointments

At the event, alongside health minister Sašo Klekovski and first deputy prime minister Bekim Sali, employment decisions were also handed out by Tetovo mayor Bilal Kasami and Čair mayor Izet Medžiti. Both are co-chairs of the ruling VLEN.

Tetovo Clinical Hospital is a public health institution under the Ministry of Health. It is not municipal. Neither mayor has any authority over its hiring.

When journalists asked in what capacity they were handing out the decisions, the health ministry replied that the hospital organised the event and they were merely invited. "The hosts were from the Tetovo Clinical Hospital. They sent out the invitations and drew up the running order," they said, and redirected the questions to the director.

The director's answer

Director Erzen Elezi rejected any suggestion of party capture. Kasami and Medžiti, he says, were invited not as VLEN co-chairs but in their capacity as mayors.

"There is nothing political. Employment decisions were awarded by me and by minister Bekim Sali and minister Sašo Klekovski. They were not invited as co-chairs of VLEN, but as mayors. We invited them out of respect and we gave them five employment decisions each to hand out. They did not even give speeches at the event, and it was not planned for them to award decisions at all, but in the end we said let us show them respect and we let them hand some out," Elezi said.

The sentence takes itself apart. It was not planned for them to hand out decisions - so in the end they handed them out. Five each. In their capacity as mayors, at an institution where a mayor has no authority whatsoever over hiring.

That the event was not seen by accident, despite the "nothing political", is confirmed by Kasami's own Facebook post: "We are strengthening the hospital's capacities and improving health services for the citizens of Tetovo and the Polog region. Investing in people and in healthcare is investing in the future of our city."

One hundred and forty-five, or one hundred and nine

One more detail worth noting: the number. Some reports speak of 145 decisions awarded, others of 109 health workers receiving them at the ceremony. The 36-decision difference is not explained anywhere.

It need not mean anything - some of the decisions may have been handed over outside the ceremony. But when the number shifts between statements about the same event and nobody pins it down, that is exactly what makes verification hard.

What comes next

Minister Klekovski announced that this completes the national project for employing service-contract workers - a figure the health ministry has stated both as 1,150 and as 1,500. In one to two months the second project follows, for 600 residents in training, 22 of them at Tetovo Clinical Hospital.

Director Elezi announced that new vacancies for 25 administrative and 12 technical staff are expected to open in September, and repeated that the goal is for the hospital to grow into a university clinic.

All of that is needed. The Tetovo hospital has gone years without enough staff and without stability. But how an appointment is handed over is not a formality - it is a message to the recipient about who they owe it to. If the system gave them the post, they are employed in a public institution. If the party handed them the paper, they are something else.