In the next five days, the management of GRAS company and the representatives of the authorities of the Canton should decide on how to pay the salaries to the workers, otherwise, there will be a suspension of public transport. The light at the end of the tunnel for GRAS cannot be seen, since no one offers specific solutions on how to get out of the financial dubious of several tens of millions of marks.
“We want salaries,” said the workers of Sarajevo GRAS clear and loud at three protests in ten days. They are asking the authorities for an answer when they will receive salaries that are late and they say that there are no more warnings, nor patience. They say that, if there is no salary by Monday at the latest, the complete public transport will be suspended.
“We have been working without a salary for three months, it’s enough, we can’t do it anymore. The question is why nobody solved the workers’ lawsuits in 2016 when it took 50.000 BAM per month, but instead it was all extended until 2021, so now there are figures of several million marks, ” said Amir Muminovic, president of the GRAS Trade Union.
“We believe that bankruptcy is in someone’s head as a way to try to save GRAS, but a lot more heads want to do what was planned in 2003, to transfer bus and minibus traffic to a private individual, and to leave GRAS with a tram and trolleybus,” said Muminovic.
”Besides dissatisfied workers of GRAS, there are also dissatisfied retirees. They claim that they receive reduced pensions due to unpaid contributions, ”Muminovic added.
“There has not been paid for seven years now. We have pension, temporary solutions, but we do not have permanent solutions. There are 127 of us, 11 have died so far. There were five prime ministers, so they did something quickly. No one lasted until the end, ” said Hafiz Dizdarevic, a retired GRAS employee.
The GRAS management states that they are asking the authorities to immediately unblock the accounts in order to pay the receivables.
“As director-general, tomorrow I will submit a request to the relevant ministry so that this request can be sent to the procedure to the Government of Canton Sarajevo (CS), which should approve the unblocking of accounts, which would enable the payment of remaining salaries and other receivables,” said Senad Mujagic yesterday, who is acting director of GRAS.
The Prime Minister of the Government of the CS also believes that GRAS has been brought to the brink of business with all the allocations. He explains the situation in this way:
”Someone offered GRAS workers a collective agreement, very creatively and very interestingly, by which they would get increased salary and the cost of salary for the company GRAS two and a half times, and then, of course, they did not pay it. The current blockade is 8.2 million BAM, and since the money was not budgeted and that it is outside the agreement that you adopted as an assembly at the end of last year, that money is not in the budget and thus workers cannot receive their salary, ” Forto explained.
According to the data, the total debt of GRAS is around 170 million BAM. The workers say that the ”disease” of their company has metastasized, but they still optimistically add that they hope for a miracle, BHRT writes.
E.DZ.
