In a sea of bad news and when we daily witness the struggle of workers for their rights and jobs – a good economic story comes to us from Igman, Konjic. In fact, this company has secured jobs for the entire 2015. That is good news for the 915 current employees, but also for 100 new ones, which is how many they intend to hire.
For the first time since Dayton, as the management of Igman says, they have signed contracts for the whole next year before the end of this year. They are slowly forgetting the difficult years when workers fought for their jobs.
“The contracts are for the US coalition forces in the far east of the world. That will be the subject of our production in the first nine months of next year. In the last quarter we will work for one buyer from a peninsular Asian country,” says Džahid Muratbegović, Director of the company.
One contract is worth EUR 22 million euros, and another $ 10 million. Bad years are behind the Igman from Konjic, it seems, since they were able to recover their pre-war place on the market. Now, they are among the five global manufacturers of ammunition.
Šaćir Herić, executive director for manufacturing, said that the new customers and retaining the old ones is a certificate of quality products.
Well, things were not always good at Igman. The company, which is 51 percent state-owned, was often shaken by workers’ protests and lawsuits. Now the situation is completely different. Wages, workers say, are not great, but the last few years they have been regular.
It is interesting that more than 50 percent of women work for Igman. Their plans are big. They think about investing in new facilities and capacity expansion. They also plan to separate production for the commercial hunting and carbine ammunition, which would mean new employment.
(Source: ekapija)
