The establishment of a financially self-sustaining Public RTV service of Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the conditions for full membership of BiH in the European Union. RTV BiH is in a difficult financial situation due to the violation of the entity broadcasters’ law on the distribution of RTV tax funds. BHRT is at the service of the citizens every day and our cameras are present and monitor all the problems of the citizens, workers’ protests, disasters and that is the case tonight as well. Our and your media company is on the verge of survival. The previous agreement on the collection of RTV tax in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is in force until December 31. The Board of Directors of BHRT sent a letter to the local authorities and international organizations, due to the difficult financial situation in Radio-television BiH.
BiH could be the only country in Europe that does not have a public broadcasting system. And already from the first of January. The long-term stepmotherly relationship of the state, the accumulated problems, legal disorder, brought BHRT to the brink of existence. For years, BHRT has not received part of the subscriptions collected on the territory of the Republika Srpska. The debt reached an amount greater than 80 million marks. There is also a problem with the collection of the RTV tax in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, because the funds are paid to the account of Radio and Television of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, not BHRT.
The management of FTV, whose mandate expired in 2013, kept the RTRS fee, which illegally collected 20 million marks on its own account, while RTV BiH does not even get what it is entitled to by law. For this reason, BHRT submitted a proposal for a new contract to Elektroprivreda BiH, requesting that the RTV fee be paid to the single account of RTV BiH, which will further distribute the money.
“The idea was to compensate BHRT with part of those funds in some way for the damage that we have already had for six years due to the inability to generate the income that the law guaranteed us from the territory of the RS, which is a completely legally clean variant, but unfortunately there was no readiness of the management Federal RTV, that is, the general director, who has been in an illegal mandate for 10 years, to find a compromise, they insisted that things remain the way they are all the time, and that brought RTV BiH literally to the brink of shutting itself down,” the general director of BHRT Belmin Karamehmedović points out.
If the payment continues to go to the account of RTVFBiH, that broadcaster will continue to illegally accumulate funds that do not belong to it by law, and BHRT will continue to sink into losses. The Management Board of RTV BiH also called for compliance with the law, sending a letter to the local authorities and international organizations, in order to warn them that in five days, if a new contract is not signed, RTV BiH will find itself in the most difficult situation so far.
The management board concluded that the next year will be extremely risky for the business of Radiotelevision Bosnia and Herzegovina. The desperate financial situation of BHRT is not unknown to the public and political factors, and it is the result of the systemic collapse of the legislative architecture on which the system of public RTV broadcasting in BiH rests. The agony goes on for years, but nothing is done.
“It is high time for the legislators, that is, the government in this country to fulfill their obligations towards the BHRT or, what is also fair, to say that it is not feasible, so that at least we know what we stand for, because in recent years there has really been a struggle for the survival of the BHRT- and it turns into agony which, I’m afraid, has come to an end, this is the moment when it’s ‘either-or’ for RTV BiH,” Karamehmedović emphasizes.
The funds that the Public Service would receive from the collection of the RTV tax would be directed to the settlement of existing debts, which would mean the settlement of basic obligations, such as communal services, the retirement of workers who have long since acquired the conditions for retirement, and the increase of wages for workers who are among the lowest in the country and they have not been corrected in the last 15 years. The situation could be changed by the ruling party, who have until January 1 to turn their promises into concrete actions. And they promised BHRT workers a systemic solution through intensive meetings with union representatives over the past months.
“The task is to fix things in the Public Service as soon as possible, to fix this problem in which RTS owes money to BHRT, and FTV has no sensibility, under the same roof, towards the management of this house, which is surely one of the foundations of objective journalism and we through the Federal Parliament, we must first of all find a way to put these things in order as soon as possible in FTV, through changes and changes in the management itself, and make it easier for BHRT to function normally,” says President of People and Justice Elmedin Konaković.
“Now we are coming to a situation where the Public Service, that BHRT will no longer function due to certain things, first of all the misunderstanding of the people who make decisions in BiH, in this case in the Federation of BiH, that BHRT is brought to the verge of shutting down, that more than 800 workers of BHRT – and practically from the first, as things are now, to stay on the street without any income”, points out the member of the Board of Directors of the Independent Trade Union of Workers in BHRT, Anel Nurković.
Although RTV BiH is in a difficult financial situation, all employees produce the program and fulfill their obligations. They report on labor rights, work to fulfill European priorities, while they themselves do not achieve them . And the European priority should be very easily solved, which is one of the conditions for joining BiH to the European Union. The way is simple – fairer distribution of the RTV tax in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, until the end of the court proceedings against RTRS.
