Yesterday’s street action, organized by the Centers for Civil Initiatives (CCI), had a goal to show the results of research on the work of public companies, which showed a huge disparity between revenues and debts of individual companies, and it was presented that Elektropriveda and GRAS were among the biggest debtors.
Hasan Kamenjakovic, PR of the CCI, revealed that the results of the research and the disparity between revenue and debt are the consequences of “a larger set of irregularities” that occur in the work of public companies.
“We have conducted extensive research on the operations of public enterprises, which covers the period from 2010 to 2019. The results showed problems in four key areas in business: lack of transparency, accountability and control of work, as well as the problem of politicization,” explained Kamenjakovic.
“The key issues are the lack of responsibility and control, and all this is additionally affected by the politicization itself, more precisely the actions of employees of public companies to achieve party interests, and not paying attention to the interest of citizens,” he added.
Since the survey included all public companies from both entities, 550 of them, the largest debtors could be identified.
The focus of the research was on companies from the Federation, where it was proved that Elektroprivreda was of the biggest debtors, taking into account all subsidiaries. In Canton Sarajevo (CS), the public company with the largest amount of debt is GRAS.
When it comes to proposals to address this situation, the CCI thinks that few steps need to be taken.
“We have created recommendations related to four key areas and we have tried, in cooperation with representatives of the Republika Srpska (RS) legislature, as well as the Parliament and the CS Assembly, to create such recommendations that can be implemented as soon as possible, so that public companies could operate for the benefit of citizens,” Kamenjakovic told.
The most common consequences of the current situation are poor public services for citizens, as well as employment through the party line.
“The position of the CCI is clear, it is necessary to respect the laws, and the law on public companies clearly states that the functions of directors and supervisory boards cannot be performed by those who have functions in political parties,” Kamenjakovic stressed, Klix.ba writes.