Citizens still protested in Sarajevo today, the fifth day after the tram accident that took place on February 12, in which 23-year-old student Erdoan Morankić was killed and 17-year-old student Ella Jovanović was seriously injured. As in the previous days, the protests began with a gathering at 12 o’clock in front of the BiH National Museum, near the intersection near the School of Mechanical Engineering, where the accident occurred. The young people gathered today mostly expressed dissatisfaction with the alleged actions of Minister Hota-Muminović, who they claim does not allow schools to let students go to protests.
Today, a much smaller number of participants gathered than before, about a hundred of them. They started for a peaceful walk towards Skenderija, and it was said that today they will not go to the General Hospital where the injured Ella Jovanović is, so as not to disturb the other patients.
The main road near the accident site was blocked.
One of the citizens, a participant in the protest, said that he will persevere in his fight “as long as he has the strength”, the most important thing for him is that his child has a future.
“If there are fewer of us, it does not mean that we will achieve less. We will be just as loud as we were yesterday,” he said, adding that the reason for the smaller number of participants at today’s rally is probably because schools do not allow students to be absent from class.
The unofficial organizers of the protest, informal groups of students and pupils, among them the group “Hočel ta projjena”, presented four key demands to the authorities yesterday.
As the first demand, they state complete transparency in the conduct of the investigation. The second request refers to the immediate withdrawal of technically defective and unsafe vehicles from traffic. The organizers of the protest demand the determination of systemic responsibility and the establishment of a long-term solution through the construction of a safe and high-quality public transport system.
Some of their demands have been partially fulfilled, namely the Minister of Transport of Sarajevo Canton, Adnan Šteta, stated yesterday that all old Czech trams have been excluded from traffic. He emphasized that these vehicles will not be returned to traffic until they pass basic technical inspections and service operations, and the results of these checks will be available to the public.
This was confirmed today at the press conference by the Prime Minister of Sarajevo Canton (KS) in resignation, Nihad Uk, who submitted his resignation on Sunday, and the day after, the director of GRAS, Senad Mujagić, also submitted his resignation.
Uk said at a press conference today that he resigned from that position for moral reasons. He requested urgent and profound changes in the company GRAS and called on the KS Prosecutor’s Office to open Pandora’s box, recalling that over the years numerous criminal charges have been filed in connection with the operations of GRAS.
