In the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republika Srpska, 144 police officers currently hold the rank of “chief inspector”, which is equated with the military rank of general, which is why police officers colloquially call chief inspectors generals.
These “artificially produced” generals cost the Ministry of Internal Affairs more than five million BAM annually, because their gross salaries are more than 3,000 BAM per month, while most of them do nothing, except for the fear that the new systematization will not abolish their easy job and the associated rank.
The RS Ministry of Internal Affairs confirmed to Capital that in addition to 144 chief inspectors, 20 police officers currently hold the rank of “police inspector general”, while the rank of chief inspector general of police is held only by the police director.
“In the rank of chief inspector, 53 police officers were retired, and four police officers in the rank of inspector general of the police,” says Ministry of Interior spokesperson Mirna Miljanović.
She explains that the Law on Police and Internal Affairs stipulates that the rank of Inspector General of Police is acquired by a police officer assigned to the duties of the head of a basic organizational unit.
“After completing the schedule for the above-mentioned jobs, the police officer returns to the rank of chief inspector,” explains Miljanović for Capital.
In a practical sense, this means that a police officer acquires the rank of inspector general of police when he is appointed as the head of a department at the headquarters of the MoI or of one of the police departments, i.e. the former CJB, and when he is dismissed from that position, he returns to the rank of chief inspector, which is had to have in order to be appointed as the head of the administration.
According to insiders’ claims, the existence of as many as 144 chief inspectors in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the RS is many times more than the needs and standards and is the result of bad Regulations on the systematization of workplaces and the formation of numerous administrations in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
“In the period about twenty years ago, there were only ten chief inspectors in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the RS, but later with changes to the Rulebook on Systematization, that number increased several times, and the real expansion and accumulation of “generals” occurred eight or nine years ago, when in the headquarters Several administrations of the MoI were formed and when the completely unnecessary police administrations of Mrkonjić Grad, Gradiška, Foča and Zvornik were formed,” one of the high officials of the MoI, who insisted on anonymity, told Capital.
When the Directorate for Serious and Organized Crime and the Directorate for Combating Terrorism were formed from the Criminal Police Directorate, our source explains further, the number of chief inspectors at the headquarters of the MoI practically tripled.
“As many managerial positions as there were in the UKP, the same number of them are foreseen in the two new administrations and in each of them an official with the rank of chief inspector. It is the same with the formation of police administrations in Mrkonjić Grad, Gradiška, Foča and Zvornik. With the formation of these administrations, the organization was fragmented and practically new functions of heads of sectors were created, in which the newly produced chief inspectors sat, and thus there were 144 “generals”, explains the interlocutor.
He adds that the current Minister of the Interior, Siniša Karan, was expected to pass a new Rulebook on systematization which, among other things, will reduce the number of “generals” and make the MoI more efficient.
“However, there is still no new rulebook which, as can be heard, is being worked on almost in secret and only the minister and the director of the police know what stage it is in and what changes it will bring. Real police officers hope that things will change, especially since the new minister has been in office for more than seven months, and has not taken any serious steps, if you don’t count the replacements and rotations at the head of three or four administrations. Karan spent his entire working life in police structures and was expected to shake up the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but that has not happened yet,” says interlocutor.
