Millions of BAM from the collection of vehicle registration stickers, instead of the state budget, could end up in the account of a private company. It is the epilogue of the new Rulebook brought by the State Minister of Transport and Communications. With the rulebook, not only will we pay almost twice as much for the stickers, but with the new technology on the stickers, all drivers will be monitored for the needs of third parties. Believe it or not, it doesn’t end there. A private company that could get a lucrative job and take millions out of the state budget is connected to the family of Milorad Dodik.
Until now, the sticker indicating the validity of the registration has cost drivers 5 BAM. With the new rulebook, it will cost 9BAM. And this is just the beginning of the story of numerous irregularities with the new rulebook. Namely, the stickers so far were issued by the competent ministries of the interior, thus filling the budget with around 6 million BAM. From now on, with more expensive stickers, the money will no longer go to the budget, but about 10 million BAM will end up in the account of a private company or, to be more precise, “professional institutions”, as prescribed by the Rulebook. The relevant ministry does not see anything objectionable neither in the price increase nor in the private company.
“I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be legal, it went through all the necessary procedures. The question arises why the price is 9 BAM and this one is 5 BAM. I would first ask the question why a plastic sticker with nothing on it costs 5 BAN, and the problem is this smart sticker,” said Vojin Mitrovic, Minister of Communications and Transport of Bosnia and Herzegovina(BiH).
But that’s not the only problem. The latter may be even bigger. And that is the security aspect. Namely, RFID technology will be used on the new stickers, which will be able to track all BiH authorities that own a car, and for the needs, as the Rulebook says, of third parties using radio frequency.
“In this way, we are practically creating a digital platform, which will later be used by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Agency for Identification Documents, Registers and Data Exchange(IDDEEA), highways and parking services,” Minister Mitrovicpoints out.
But the problems don’t end there. The first assistants of Minister Vojin Mitrovic claim that the laws and established procedures were not followed, and that the proposal was not submitted for the opinion of the competent authorities. Given that it is a very complex regulation, expertise could not be secured in the ministry, they claim.
“As I said recently, I am convinced that the minister did not read the rulebook before publication. I expect him to read the rulebook, he is an experienced man, and to cancel that rulebook. My opinion is that it was done in a non-transparent manner – it did not take into account the opinions of the institutions concerned with registration procedures during the consultation phase”, explains Nedzad Brankovic, Deputy Minister of Communications and Transport of BiH.
And the competent IDDEEA considers the Rulebook illegal. They claim that they submitted their proposals to the Ministry, but they were not respected, and their opinion was not even asked for, even though it should have been.
“The provision of Article 43 of the Rulebook is illegal because it is envisaged that these jobs will be awarded through a public tender to a professional institution – a legal entity. The provision of Article 22 of the Law on the Administration of BiH defines the procedure for entrusting public authority in a specific case to a professional institution and expressly determines that it can only be entrusted by law. In this particular case, the Ministry of Affairs related to stickers is trying to do it according to the provisions of the aforementioned rulebook, which is an act of lower legal force”, the IDDEEA announced.
The rulebook authorizing a private company to issue and activate stickers has been characterized as illegal by almost all ministries of interior affairs in the Federation. And that stickers are definitely a new big affair is also confirmed by the fact that because of this rulebook, the Security Committee of the Federal Parliament will hold an extraordinary session because, as stated, there is no legal provision at the federal level that this rulebook has not interfered with by violating it.
“There were one million and 150 thousand registered cars in 2021. The difference of 8 BAM would not go to the BiH budget, but to those selected private companies. The question really arises, with all due respect, who can do something like that, who is normal and pays attention to the interests of the state and the people,” warns Damir Masic, former Minister of Education and Science of the FBiH.
Problems don’t end here. The new one is created in response to the question – who uses these stickers in the region and the European Union (EU)?
“No country in the surrounding area, no member state of the EUhas implemented this system,” notes the IDDEEA.
In the EU countries, unlike BiH, there is no private at the expense of the state because, as is increasingly being said in the corridors, the company that would receive millions from the stickers is connected to the family of Milorad Dodik, just as the state minister of transport and communications is related to Dodik through party, Federalna writes.
E.Dz.
