After reducing benefits for mothers and veterans, young people are also left without subsidies, KS Government allocated 500,000 KM for 2025

By: Amra Vrabac

In the Draft Budget of KS for 2025, which amounts to 1.88 billion KM, 500,000 KM is planned for subsidizing young people to solve their housing issues, as has been the practice in previous years since the project was implemented. However, the last public call was in 2023, and to this day, the payment of the promised subsidies of 10,000 to 12,000 KM for 1,140 young people who met the criteria has not been resolved. 1,000 of them received 4,816 KM each in January 2024, which is the smallest subsidy amount paid. Young people have repeatedly organized protests demanding the promised amount, and the KS Government told them that there is no more money for them.

Later, at the end of 2024, the Minister of Transport of KS, Adnan Šteta, who was also in charge of the Ministry of Communal Economy, Infrastructure, Spatial Planning, Construction and Environmental Protection at the time, after the arrest of Minister Bojan Bošnjak, under whose jurisdiction the project of subsidizing young people for housing solutions falls, enabled the payment for another 104 young people, and they also received 4,816 KM each. Although a promise was made at the time that everyone would be paid the difference up to 10,000 KM, or about 5,200 KM more, the payment never happened.

Šteta no longer manages that ministry; the management has been taken over by the Minister of Veterans' Affairs of KS, Omer Osmanović (NIP).

On the eve of the adoption of the Budget for 2025, the deceived young people addressed an open letter to the KS Government and Prime Minister Nihad Uk.

In June 2024, the KS Assembly accepted the Initiative of cantonal deputies Admela Hodžić and Aljoša Čampara to find funds in the amount of approximately 5,500,000 KM to pay the difference in the individual subsidy amount of 10,000 KM for solving housing issues according to the Public Call from 2023.

“To this day, the KS Government, led by Prime Minister Nihad Uk, has not implemented this conclusion; on the contrary, it has ignored the position of the KS Assembly. We hereby invite all clubs within the KS Assembly to come up with the same amendment – to demand that the conclusion of the SKS be respected and that the payment for young people in the amount of 5,500,000 KM be included in the budget for 2025, which is approximately 0.27% of the total planned budget for 2025,” they stated.

“We appeal to you to be diligent and strict on this issue, because what is the point of deputies and the Assembly in which you are located to represent the interests of all citizens, if your conclusions are not implemented by the Government of Sarajevo Canton? Whom, then, do we make conclusions and laws for if even the Government does not implement them, and what kind of message is that to the citizens who have given you their trust? Bad strategies should not be broken on the backs of young people, and we ask you to set aside the differences when it comes to young people,” they concluded.

The budget plans 500,000 KM for youth subsidies, which is not enough

The Budget for 2025 also includes an item – solving housing issues for young people through rent, for which 300,000 KM is allocated. This concerns subsidizing rent for young people.

The KS Government has already prepared amendments to two laws that will reduce benefits for mothers and certain benefits for veterans, as well as other social categories, because they are being aligned with the minimum, not the average salary in the FBiH, as well as with federal laws that have recently changed and limited the growth of benefits.

On Friday, March 28, there could be turbulence in front of the KS Government while the KS Assembly session is underway, if young people, mothers, expectant mothers, veterans, and other social categories, as well as citizens dissatisfied with the situation in Sarajevo Canton, express their dissatisfaction.

Incidentally, the KS Government, at the last minute and under pressure from strikes and protests by seven trade unions in KS, increased the base from 385 to 400 KM. The salary increase will be a maximum of about 100 KM for those with higher coefficients, and price increases for communal services, primarily water and waste disposal, are announced...