Around 5,000 people in Bosnia-Herzegovina continue to live in collective centers across the country, even though it has been 25 years since the war, Mirhunisa Zukic-Komarica, President of the Union for Sustainable Return and Integration of BiH, told Avaz news portal.
Zukic-Komarica explained that those are people who live very poorly. It is mostly about social cases of the second category and those who did not receive housing units in their places of return.
Zukic-Komarica also points out that there are cases, such as the one in Zivinice, that houses were built after the war, in which refugees from eastern Bosnia lived, who later returned to their homes or moved on. Other social cases have returned to their temporary homes – explains Zukic-Komarica, adding that the residents of the collective centers are taken care of by the competent entity ministries, and that the state borrows credit and assumes the responsibility to resolve their housing issues and existence.
“There is also a Collective Center near Srebrenik, which will soon be closed. But let’s be honest, there are people living in sheds. It is devastating that, according to the latest data, another 5,000 live in the centers,” she concludes.
However, more complete data on the exact number of people living in collective centers in the Federation of BiH and Republika Srpska, Zukić-Komarica notes, is provided by the competent federal ministry and the RS Secretariat for Refugees and Migration.
According to information from the RS Secretariat for Displaced Persons and Migration, there are five collective settlements in the territory of this entity.
According to the Ministry of Displaced Persons, there are 93 other collective accommodations in the Federation of BiH.
“About 1,500 families or 4,600 people are housed there. Among them are those without housing, poor health, low income, or persons without any income, who could not secure the housing issue in another way,” was explained from the Ministry. In addition to people who are forced to live in collective centers, there are those who do not want to leave the centers. “Some families do not want to return to their place of return, so they are given social housing buildings where they can live up to a certain deadline with minimal payments,” explains Zukić-Komarica.
