Pensioners and Labour Day: Nostalgia for Better Times Past

(Patria) - How did pensioners in Bosnia and Herzegovina welcome May 1st - International Labour Day today?

The news that minimum pensions will be increased by 4.5 percent, meaning less than 30 KM, disappointed them more than it pleased them, writes BHRT.

They say that with the current price hikes, they couldn't even afford a salad to go with a kilogram of meat with that money. Nevertheless, while protesting in Tuzla, they remembered the May Day celebrations of the past.

Tuzla was once one of the largest industrial centers in Yugoslavia. When May 1st - Labour Day arrived, everyone celebrated, happy and content.

- Our greatest pleasure was the May Day awakening, the May Day alarm clock when we, as youth, would rush to sit in a flower-decorated boat. And the rotating siren, like a fire siren, an alarm.

And so it went through the whole of Lipnica, and we had to get up at 4 AM. And that was the greatest joy of it all - recalls pensioner Sead Kovačević.

- Before, there was a trade union, there was a workers' assembly, a workers' council, a court, you were always protected. We built this country, we built it and defended it. And now we have nothing from it - says pensioner Ramiz Šehić.

Adem Goletić, a former miner from the Đurđevik mine, also points out that he cannot believe that human rights are lost today, that trade unions protect the rights of employers more than workers.

And in the past, workers were not only protected but also respected and valued. For pensioners, the political fathers of this country are most to blame for them being on the brink of existence.

- I couldn't buy their tie with my pension. And they still behave like that - everyone loves Bosnia. Some of them, I won't say who. But they do everything to dismantle Bosnia, so that the poor have bread. He has a comfortable position and stays silent - says pensioner Avdija Halilović.

- May 1st remains a pleasant memory of the former system when people were valued as people, not as cattle, as the rulers behave towards people today. Therefore, if we were treated as humans, we wouldn't be here, we wouldn't be protesting, we wouldn't be asking for anything special.

Most absurdly, we are seeking European standards, and they are offering us African-tribal ones like the Hottentots, Zulus, Kaffirs, Bushmen - states pensioner Vehid Jahić.

With great nostalgia, pensioners welcome Labour Day, pointing out that their existence is threatened today, and their human dignity is trampled upon.