Ministry of Finance and Treasury of Bosnia and Herzegovina Ignores Unions, They Are Not Informed of the Proposal for the Base Amount for Salary Calculation

(Patria) - State ministers will be in Mostar, where a session of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina is being held today, because the air conditioning in the building in Sarajevo is not working, and they will also adopt the base amount for salary calculation, the decision on vacation allowance and the amount of daily allowances for official travel.

The Ministry of Finance and Treasury again did not hold consultations with representative unions at the state level, submitting draft decisions into procedure even though the provisions of Article 57 of the Law on Salaries of Employees in Institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina oblige them to hold consultations.

"In the previous period, none of the union representatives were informed about the draft decisions on the amount of the base, vacation allowance, and daily allowances! There was never a response to the unions' requests that the base amount for salary calculation for 2024 be increased by 8.3%, which, according to data from the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was the inflation rate for last year, to the amount of 650.00 BAM.

We fear that the Council of Ministers will show its arbitrariness and keep the base at the same level, and why wouldn't they, given that they have excellent salaries in the amount of over 5,100 BAM, unlike employees in institutions with secondary education who work for a salary of 720 to 960 BAM depending on the workplace," says Edin Kahrimanović, President of the SIPA Union and Deputy President of the Union of Police Bodies.

Kahrimanović noted that at the beginning of 2023, the Council of Ministers adopted a conclusion that within three months a new Law on Salaries should be drafted, which would attempt to address the inequalities and disparities in the currently valid Law.

"The same conclusion was confirmed by the Presidency when proposing the Budget for 2023, however, what has been done to date - absolutely nothing. At the same time, the salaries of judges and prosecutors at the state level, who receive them from the same Budget as everyone else, have been increased by 12.5% for this year," says Kahrimanović.