Started Strong, Then Stopped: Konaković Announced Penalties 5 Months Ago, Directors Still Have Huge Salaries

Almost five months have passed since, without doubting his sincere intentions to tackle the enormous problems, the Prime Minister of Sarajevo Canton Elmedin Konaković announced that “soon some irresponsible directors of public utility companies will face sanctions” due to excessively high salaries, writes the news agency Patria.

Konaković, it is worth recalling, since taking over the prime ministerial position, has visited all companies owned by the Canton and announced radical moves and changes, both in their operations and in cutting the monthly incomes of individuals.

In September 2015, he announced the holding of a regular and emergency session of the Government of Sarajevo Canton, at which the salaries of directors in public companies in Sarajevo Canton were to be discussed.

In the week following these statements, the Government of Sarajevo Canton held two sessions, as Konaković had announced. However, at neither of them were directors' salaries discussed, nor was the establishment of working bodies to address this issue. Konaković also announced criminal charges against some directors and supervisory boards, but four months later, there is no concrete action.

-It is insane that someone has a monthly salary of almost 10,000 KM, while the Canton and society are currently in this state. Almost two months ago, Finance Minister Jasmin Halebić and I officially visited the Tax Administration of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and requested this information. We opened another taboo topic that was whispered about, but even we, as representatives in the Assembly of Sarajevo Canton, did not have the right information. I spoke about this topic several times at sessions of the Assembly and the Government of Sarajevo Canton and announced a fight against this phenomenon that shows our failures, Konaković told Klix.ba at the time.

Even then, he said he was aware that some "centers of power" would object to this, but that does not interest him as prime minister or the Government of Sarajevo Canton at all. However, judging by the silence that followed after a fierce public dust-up, when it was revealed that some directors have 115,000 KM in annual net income, the “centers of power” seem to have achieved their goal - no more words about directors' salaries.