Railways of Republika Srpska has published an internal call for administrative workers to apply for incentive severance pay. The call does not apply to field workers, who are missing by the tens. Although the company has been in the reconstruction process for six years from a World Bank loan of 100 million marks, it records losses every year.
Both father and grandfather worked for the Railways, the young train dispatcher Dragan Peulić says. He adds that young people will not join the Railways because of the low wages. He does not expect that the reconstruction process will bring this company out of the crisis, and he has a proposal for improving business.
“The current situation is such that there is a shortage of executive service workers, dispatchers, train drivers, shunners, the backbone of the Railway without which it cannot function. I think there is hope for the Railway if the government decides to survive, materials that should not go by road go by rail,” Peulic says.
While the workers believe that the reconstruction process is slow, the Prime Minister of Republika Srpska calls for patience.
“We are now finalizing the issue of small shareholders and the taking over of 100 percent ownership of Railways by the RS. 15 days ago, at the Government session, we approved the employment of the workers that the Railways were looking for,” Radovan Viskovic explains.
The Railway Administration solves the problem of employee structure through retirement, severance pay, retraining and retraining. They point out that they are working with the relevant Ministry to resolve the issue of debt conversion.
“Since the establishment of the Railways, they have been operating at a loss, with the exception of 2018 and 2019. We are talking about the accumulation of losses, which by the end of June this year amounts to 138,919,908 BAM. The railways will cover the accumulated loss in accordance with future activities through the process of financial reconstruction of the company.”
Because of the multimillion-dollar losses in the Railways, someone must be held accountable, they are categorical in the Railway Workers’ Union.
“No one has ever responded. The Union’s position is that someone needs to be located, to say ‘who is the culprit’, for the Prosecutor’s Office to take over, investigate and start proceedings,” Jelenko Dobras, the president of the Union of Railway Workers of RS says.
The Union of Transport is dissatisfied with the offered severance pay of 12 net salaries, i.e. 24 salaries for the disabled. They think they are not
stimulating and that wages must be increased.
“Those salaries are low for the standard of living. When you look back 2-3 years, everything went wild, prices are going wild, wages are low.”
There are 1,903 employees working in Željeznice, and 2,098 are planned for systematization. Completion of the reconstruction of the company into a holding with three subsidiaries – infrastructure, passenger and goods transportation is planned by the end of next year.
