Pensioners in the Una-Sana Canton of Bosnia and Herzegovina live on the edge of existence. With an average pension of 490 marks in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Federalna checked how they live and survive with enormous increases in the price of basic foodstuffs on a daily basis.
Esma Midzic from Bihac is an 86-year-old pensioner. While prices are rising every day, pensions remain the same. When asked how she survives, she says, she doesn’t even know.
“You know how, when I go into Bingo then I start crying that a liter of oil is 5.80 that’s sad. And second of all I’m not telling you that I took two kilos now I take two apples or two bananas and so on, I survive somehow. I pay the utilities and go to get the medicine, so what’s left … and I have my dear Diana who replaced my child, I like her a lot. She buys me medicine, meat, brings me everything I need. That’s how I live,” she explains.
A large number of people live on the minimum pension. Hasan and Mirsada manage with a slightly higher amount than the minimum. Although their pensions are not too high, they say it is easier because there are two of them.
Mirsad Avdic: “We live okay but with a lower pension I can’t survive, it’s too expensive, prices are rising abnormally and it’s really hard to live.”
Although citizens are mostly optimistic and think that it can always be worse, they still have a common position – it is difficult to fit into huge price increases. The gloomy everyday life, they say, is forgotten with a little joke and laughter.
Osman Mujanovic:
“Prices are abnormally expensive. I don’t know how anyone manages. I don’t go to the doctor, so I don’t need to buy medicine.”
A few kilometers outside the city, they visited the Prsa family. Stipe and Lucija live on a pension of 550 marks.
“It’s all going abnormally at an unregulated pace, today you buy something for 5.60 and you come another time it’s 8.60,.”
It is easier for us than for others, say Prse, adding that it is prmarily because they live in the countryside so they grow their own vegetables.
”I have a good garden, I planted onions, and so on. I’m not saying it’s hard enough, but it’s hard for an older man to every retiree because it always goes up. And then the services in those shopping centers, they are adjusted to those who have, those who do not manage, buy what is cheaper,” Prse adds.
They also have three cows, so they sell some cheese and milk. His wife Lucija says that thanks to their domestic breeding and animals, she never has to worry about having lunch on the table.
