Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Defense Minister Sifet Podzic has announced that he will seek an increase in the budget allocated to the Ministry of Defense (MOD), primarily to improve the status of soldiers and employees.
This will try to reawaken interest in the recruitment of professional soldiers, which has seen a steady decline in recent years. The extent to which Bosnians and Herzegovinians are currently (un) interested in becoming professional soldiers is indicated by the fact that fewer and fewer are applying for jobs in the Armed Forces.
Thus, as Podzic told Avaz news portal, two men applied for the last call for tenders by the Ministry of Defense on average.
This means that at least one of them will get a job. However, if this data is compared with that of only four years ago, when 13 people applied in one advertised position, then it is clear how much competition was on the labor market for this job.
It is assumed that the low starting salaries, which amount to about 706 BAM for a soldier in the Armed Forces of BiH, are the main reason why the unemployed literally “skip” job advertisements for professional soldiers.
With poor incomes, poor conditions in which soldiers work are certainly the reason why there is less interest in engagement in the AFBiH.
But whether there will be a positive information on the requests from the Ministry of Defense to increase the budget for these purposes is yet to be seen. Soon, the budget for each individual institution for this year will be presented to the new ministers and they will make a statement on it.
The need to increase salaries not only for soldiers, but also for police officers at state-level agencies, as well as for civil servants who were cut their salaries several years ago, has been pointed out by unions for years.
It is encouraging that in a recent statement to Avaz, Vjekoslav Bevanda, Minister of Finance and Treasury, expressed his understanding of these demands of trade unionists and supported the resolution of this problem.
Otherwise, 452 soldiers left the AFBiH last year and hope that the departure of the people, which is our army’s largest and highest quality resource, will be stopped.
