Representatives of the Independent Trade Union of Chemical and Non-Metal Workers in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina visited the residents of Donja Jablanica and toured the area that suffered the most in the recent catastrophic floods and landslides.
On that occasion, they presented a cash donation to the most vulnerable families. The funds were collected by workers, especially workers of GIKIL, the company that is most vulnerable and suffers major losses in its business, due to the destruction of the railway in Donja Jablanica.
Seventeen of the most vulnerable families from Donja Jablanica received a cash donation from the Independent Trade Union of Chemical and Non-Metal Workers in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Among them is Lejla Begović, who lost her husband after the catastrophic flood and landslide and says she has no intention of returning to Donja Jablanica.
“I am currently staying with some wonderful people in Jablanica, I am a mother with three children… This is how I would like to thank these wonderful people who came to visit me. We will go slowly, step by step, I hope we will succeed in this. Thanks to good people and those donations, I hope we will have a home again,” says Lejla.
“I am very glad that people came to visit us, to visit us, above all to support us in our return and rebuild our houses and to thank them very much for their involvement in helping us overcome this trouble that befell us together,” said Aziz Mušanović, a resident of Donja Jablanica.
“We collected around 30,000 marks in front of the Union of Chemicals and Nonmetals, and each of those people received three thousand marks. We know that this is symbolic, we know that it is a drop in a glass, but a lot of drops make a glass, and I think that if we all made an effort, these people would be able to get funds to rebuild their houses, to rehabilitate their houses. We also toured the field on Saturday, now we will go to Donja Jablanica again because the management of GIKIL allocated another 21,000 marks for seven more families,” emphasizes Ilvana Smajlović from the Independent Union of Chemical and Non-Metal Workers in FBiH.
The most funds were collected by the workers of GIKIL, a company that is otherwise the most threatened due to the stoppage of railway traffic in Donja Jablanica and is already suffering millions of losses in business. For this reason, they announced a peaceful protest in Donja Jablanica for Thursday, November 21.
“When we see that a month and a half has already passed since the interruption of rail traffic, where GIKIL’s basic raw material for work is coal that comes from America via ships to the port of Ploče, from there it is transported by state railway to GIKIL. The interruption of traffic has caused major problems, significantly higher costs where trucks have been hired, which will allegedly have an additional 10 million in costs for these almost two months,” says the president of the GIKIL Trade Union Ermin Halilović.
There is no end in sight to the agony of the residents of Donja Jablanica. Despite appeals to the authorities to conduct an assessment of the safety of the quarry and landslide and to begin solving the housing issue of residents whose homes have been completely destroyed, there is still no answer. And it is precisely the lack of help from the competent institutions that hurts the residents of Donja Jablanica the most, BHRT writes.
