Imagine having an official vehicle and the possibility of unlimited use, so apart from business purposes, you can use it to go on a trip, to the sea, to visit relatives, to a wedding or some other celebration, without having to pay for fuel or service. So, you drive, and someone else pays, in this case the state, that is BH citizens. This problem most worried the member of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Šemsudin Mehmedović, who also held a media conference on this issue.
BiH officials have the opportunity to use official vehicles 24 hours a day for various purposes, their deputies and assistants, heads of the cabinet, secretaries of the ministry. This is enabled by the Rulebook on the conditions of procurement and the manner of using official vehicles in the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“Article 6 paragraph 6 of the Rulebook stipulates the following, the use of an official vehicle continuously 24 hours a day is approved by the head of the institution by a special act. So the head of the institution approves the use of the vehicle for himself without any consent and control of the authority that appointed him, and for others without any criteria,” Mehmedovic adds.
Instead of official vehicles, as many as 149 of them are available to BiH officials, we found an empty parking lot of one of the state institutions. Tens of millions of marks of budget money have been driven in an unknown direction for now. Representative Šemsudin Mehmedović says that the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina does not conduct parliamentary supervision, and the Office for the Audit of Institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina has never questioned the use of official vehicles 24 hours a day.
There are also positive examples, as evidenced by data on 15 state institutions.
“I single out the example of the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the most important institutions in the country. The bank employs 347 people and no appointed person, neither the governor, nor vice governors or directors of the main units or branches have an official vehicle at their disposal 24 hours a day, the same is true in the Constitutional Court and the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina .”
The surveyed citizens do not see anything positive in the whole story…
How absurd the situation we live in is shown by the fact that the already high salaries of state officials have recently been even higher, due to the decision of the BiH Council of Ministers to increase the base.
Although the coalition of the Three parliamentarians announced that they would give up receiving, according to media reports, an increase of 1,000 marks, only four of them gave up.
Mehmedovic asked the Council of Ministers to establish criteria for the use of official vehicles, and that the money intended for that item be diverted to other justified purposes.
