Representatives of the Union of Railway Executives of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina abandoned the announced strike after the FBiH House of Representatives, through seven amendments to the budget for the year 2023, reduced the allocation for the Railways by ten million marks.
Although there will be no suspension of railway traffic, union members still express great dissatisfaction, considering that the parliamentarians have seriously threatened the stability of the business as well as the existence of this company and the workers themselves with this move. On the other hand, some federal representatives claim that this is only a temporary measure until the budget is rebalanced.
The FBiH railways are a generator of economic development, extremely important for the functioning and sustainability of the economy in our country. Mines have a contract with this company, that is, the most important B&H. companies like Elektroprivreda, Gikil Arcelor Mitala, Natron Maglaja, Koksna industrija Lukavac and similar. Considering the large infrastructure of the Railways, a lot of money is needed to maintain that large system. Therefore, the recent reduction of the amount for the Railways in the federal budget by 10 million marks could threaten both the business and the company itself and its employees, the Trade Union warns.
On the other hand, federal representative Damir Mašić claims that the situation is not so serious. He explains that this is a temporary solution until the budget is rebalanced: These 10 million are a temporary solution as temporarily taken and allocated to some other things – when the government comes, and it will have to rebalance the budget due to economic and all other parameters, those 10 million will be returned, and from these 10 million removed, the budget of the railways of the federation is larger 2 million more than it was last year, so what we immediately said will neither call into question the operations of the Railways of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina nor will the material position and status of the employees be called into question.
Mašić’s party colleague and delegate in the federal House of Peoples, Irfan Čengić, was against such a move to reduce the grant for the maintenance of the railway infrastructure. He believes that the adopted amendments proposed at the House of Representatives are unenforceable and not well prepared: the formation of the Government will not affect that money for the Railways, I believe that the existing Government will return that money because that is what was proposed in their budget proposal, so Fadil Novalić and the Government of the Federation have a budget redistribution instrument where they can easily get up to 10% of the budget from one item transfer budget items to another – of course, they cannot add new budget items that did not exist in the adopted budget proposal.
The unions remind the parliamentarians and the government that the employees of the Railways have the lowest wages in the Federation. They are also facing the departure of executive staff
Rail transport is cheaper, more reliable and relieves road traffic – precisely because of this, it is in everyone’s interest that it be functional and modernized, and any reduction in the budget will slow down its development.
