Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has not received any legislation in the past 11 months, thanks to work of its parliamentarians. However, this does not prevent them from regularly paying (not) well-deserved and enormously high salaries. Since October last year, they have been more or less on a “forced” vacation due to the lack of political agreement on the formation of the BiH Council of Ministers. The work of the legislature is conditioned by the constitution of the executive branch, which is not a common practice of democratic states.
On October 7, 2018, the citizens of our country directly elected 42 of their representatives in the “lower house” of the State Parliament, and another 15 sat in the “upper house”.
Representing, as they like to say, the interest of the people and citizens who have trusted them, a total of 57 elected representatives in parliamentary clubs have spent less than 13 hours over the past nine months since they took office. Since December 6th, when the constituent session was held, the House of Representatives has met in total four times.
According to the transcripts, these sessions lasted a total of 11 hours and 26 minutes. Again, within seven months of its constitution, the House of Peoples has held three sessions, totaling an hour and 27 minutes.
Although they did not even spend 13 working hours in parliament, MPs and delegates for “hard” work filled their pockets with amounts far in excess of average salaries.
According to the available data, between 4,800 BAM and 7,000 BAM are paid monthly to the state parliamentarians for salaries and benefits. If we consider only the minimum wage of 4.800 BAM, and multiply it by 57 (number of parliamentarians) and for the last nine months, we come to the amount of almost 2.5 million BAM.
At a minimum, it cost BiH citizens less than 13 hours of work for the people they gave their trust to during the October elections. In doing so, BiH did not receive any new laws or amend existing ones, and, among other things, remained deprived of its vote in the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, Vijesti.ba news portal reports.
