Damage from the floods in 2014 in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) was estimated at four billion BAM. Half of the collected donations and aid amount cannot be tracked. Nine years later, the same scenario, because nothing has been repaired.
After nine years, almost the same scenario in the northwest of BiH. Flooded households, interruption of road communication. A state of natural disaster was declared in Bihac, Bosanska Krupa, Bosanski Novi, and several other towns. Landslides were also activated in several locations.
.04 percent of monitoring the expenditure of funds
After the catastrophic floods nine years ago, the estimated total damage in BiH was four billion BAM. At the donor conference held in Paris at the time, where funds were collected for the entire region, BiH received 1.5 billion BAM.
In the USAID report a few years later, it was stated that the expenditure of money intended for damage repair could not be traced.
“Overall, looking at the spending of funds that went through government institutions, we can say that we only know about 55 percent of these funds where and how they were spent, that is, we have lists of end users, locations of infrastructure projects, lists of contractors, implementers, and competent municipalities for them. For the remaining 45 percent, we do not have enough data on their implementation,” the report pointed out.
Through the lists of the expenditure of funds, which were available after the donations, it was possible to monitor only individual beneficiaries of aid in the entire amount. In that chain, it was possible to trace the expenditure of only 0.04 percent of the expenditure of funds to the contractors who were paid for the provision of services.
Since 2014, the coordination of all levels of government in BiHrelated to the rehabilitation of river courses apparently, was not executed, and it was only shown with words, and not with deeds. Although, as everyone claims, millions of BAM were invested, little was realized in practice.
A few days ago, Public Enterprise ”Vode Srpske” boasted that the government has been continuously investing in the rehabilitation of existing and the construction of new flood defense systems since 2010. As much as 200 million BAM, they claim, has been invested in recent years.
Federal auditors warned of deficiencies in the flood protection system back in 2013, but no one paid attention even then. They stated that the method of water management is not good and not profitable.
“In a situation where each level of government plans and implements protection measures on watercourses belonging to one catchment area in a different way, without coordinated plans and actions, it leads to ‘throwing money down the drain,'” it was mentioned in the audit report, Klix.ba reports.
E.Dz.
