Efendić: FBiH Government wants to close student hotel and move a new federal institution into it

(Patria) - A student hotel with 96 double and 36 single rooms was opened in the municipality of Novi Grad Sarajevo in 2014.

It is located next to the student dormitory building in Nedžarići, stated the mayor of Novi Grad Municipality Sarajevo, Semir Efendić, in his latest Facebook post.

"After court proceedings related to the company that built the hotel, it was taken over by the Federal Agency for Management of Confiscated Property and the hotel continued to operate. It employs 35-40 workers and is profitable.

The Federal Government is now planning to close this hotel and turn it into the headquarters of some new state, i.e., federal institution, something like a federal prosecutor's office, as I understand it. They also mention a 'federal anti-corruption police', so this jumping into the hotel seems to go along with the name of that institution.

It is simply unbelievable that the Government of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is unable to build even a single office for its needs, so they decide to reduce the tourist capacities of our municipality and the capital city to house their institutions there.

How will they turn hotel rooms with bathrooms into offices, who benefits from that? How do they lack the sense to shut down jobs in the economy of workers who earn their own salaries, and instead of a hotel that was a source of income, they want to have an administration building that will only consume the budget, while the hotel filled that budget through taxes.

We demand that the Government of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina abandon this senseless idea which reduces the tourist offer and the number of beds, accommodation capacities of our municipality, all to satisfy the expansion and accumulation of administration that is on the budget!

Let them house that institution in one of the numerous empty buildings or let them build a building for those needs, but closing the hotel is truly unnecessary and unacceptable," Efendić stated.