Public transport carriers in Banja Luka have expressed dissatisfaction with the protest in the main city street because the city administration is not responding to their appeals to increase public transport prices or subsidies. Despite the protest, public transport was not stopped because the carriers who have contracts with the City of Banja Luka sent vehicles from the reserve to the protests.
Carriers with about thirty buses from the reserve protested against the misunderstanding between the carrier and the city administration.
The appearances of the transporter and the mayor of Banja Luka, Drasko Stanivukovic, on the previous day additionally aggravated the situation because threats were filed with lawsuits, termination of contracts and plans to establish a public company that would perform public transport in Banja Luka.
The carriers announced today that from April 1, if no agreement is reached with the mayor, they could suspend all subsidies that the city administration agreed with them for certain categories of the population.
DEJAN MIJIC, Banja Luka Transport Association
“We will respect the agreement and we will continue to act in accordance with what is specified here. We are lawyers who will continue to take measures on our behalf and under our authority. We are still at the disposal of the mayor for talks, we are open to cooperation as we have been so far, but we simply can no longer work to our detriment, we cannot give discounts from ourselves, we have no more funds. ”
NEVEN STANIC, Councilor in the Banja Luka City Assembly – United Srpska
“The parliamentary majority and the mayor, I’m sure, want and need to find a solution. Whether that solution will be reached in a way that suits the carriers or the city administration remains to be seen. But it can’t be seen if they don’t sit down and talk.”
The city of Banja Luka does not accept the request of the carrier to increase the price of public transport, and the carriers are therefore asking for subsidies from the city budget. There is a discrepancy between the two dominant policies in Banja Luka – the policy of the mayor who asks the parliamentary majority to return the real estate tax, ie four million BAM by how much the budget revenue has been reduced.
On the other hand, the parliamentary majority believes that they could allocate about half a million BAM for public transport subsidies from the existing items of the city budget.
Carriers consider such an idea insufficient given the rise in fuel prices and the losses they have had lately.
For now, there is no indication of a solution to the problem, and because of everything, the citizens of Banja Luka could suffer in the end.
Source: BHRT
Photo: archive
