The Zaev Government removed Stojko Paunovski as head of the DPI product safety bureau. Paunovski, an SDSM party official and friend of Prime Minister Zaev, was removed after he refused to accept 33 unqualified ethnic Albanian “diversity hires” in the institution.

Zaev was under strong pressure from his first deputy Artan Grubi and other Albanian members of the Government to remove Paunovski. Grubi is spearheading the process of integrating about 1,200 Albanians who held no-show jobs for years, some of them for more than a decade, just to prop up the overall number of Albanians working in the public sector, to institutions where they would hold actual jobs.

Paunovski was supported by the DPI employees, 90 percent of whom signed a petition to keep him in office.