Experts claim: Reconstruction of Sarajevo's water supply network will take several years

The Sarajevo Canton Government at yesterday's session accepted the decision of the VIK Assembly to dismiss the members of the Supervisory Board of KJKP Vodovod i kanalizacija and appoint a new president and two members. Appointed were Rasim Mezit, Senad Smajlović and Damir Saračević. As stated by KS Prime Minister Elmedin Konaković, these are non-partisan individuals, reports the Patria agency.

Now the path is open for the dismissal of ViK director Nezir Hadžić, announced Konaković, repeating for the umpteenth time that with this dismissal he is "risking his political status".

What the epilogue of the saga surrounding ViK and the currents within the SDA will be will become clear in the coming days. A thematic session of the KS Assembly on water problems will be held on September 28.

The question is what can be done with new people as proposed by Prime Minister Konaković. Director Nezir Hadžić was also new at ViK, but the situation is getting worse. Hadžić was there for exactly a year and a half. What can anyone do in such a short time? Konaković shortened his mandate by two and a half years, probably to shift the burden of responsibility for the situation at VIK away from himself in front of the embittered citizens of Sarajevo.

It was the still-current ViK director Nezir Hadžić who formed a team to solve the problem. A tender for detecting faults in the water supply network had been completed. This job was awarded in the tender to the Institute for Hydraulic Engineering of the Faculty of Civil Engineering in Sarajevo. However, the Prime Minister and his Government stopped that process. Prof. Dr. Tarik Kupusović, director of the Institute for Hydraulic Engineering, did not want to comment on why the entire process was stopped.

"The problem is poor management of this company (VIK) for a full twenty years," said Prime Minister Konaković at today's press conference. So, out of twenty years of catastrophic work at Sarajevo's VIK, the Prime Minister singled out the year and a half mandate of young director Nezir Hadžić. Why? Because water shortages culminated in recent months and a political sacrifice was sought, along with gathering points. After all, next year is an election year.

A source from the Patria agency, one of the engineers well-versed in the problems of water shortages in the capital, says that the problem is not only with the Sarajevo waterworks' losses and leakage of large amounts of water. The problem is that ViK must replace more than a hundred outdated and barely functional pumps. Each of these pumps costs between 50,000 and 100,000 KM. The transformer stations and reservoirs are also in poor condition, and the costs are enormous.

Since there is talk of a large surplus of employees at VIK, it should be noted that current director Hadžić managed to reduce the number from 1,100 to about 900 employees.

The waterworks has huge expenses. The monthly electricity bill amounts to more than one million KM. For the wastewater treatment plant in Butile alone, ViK pays 200,000 KM per month. No one raises the issue of the water price for Igman and Bjelašnica, where it is much more expensive to deliver water than to charge at the current price.

Of course, the low price of water is also a problem, but the SDA has so far regularly counted on people's votes and because of that, threw those same people, the citizens of Sarajevo, into problems, and brought the water supply system to the point of collapse, says our source.

The allocation from the Sarajevo Canton Government for ViK is minimal. Last year, 7.8 million KM was allocated for KJKP Rad, 6.1 million for KJKP Park, 4.7 million for KJKP Pokop, and only 282,000 KM for Vodovod i kanalizacija. Over five years, this looks equally tragic and shows why the work of this company is catastrophic. KJKP Rad received 46.8 million, Park 56.8 million KM, Pokop 28.1 million, and Vodovod 8.4 million. Such a meager investment in the water supply network of the capital is tragic.

Namely, the same authorities issued permits for the construction of 36,000 new apartments and more than five hundred new facilities, such as hotels or office buildings, throughout the Canton. So, who is responsible for this situation? Certainly not the director from a year and a half ago? It was previously warned that Sarajevo would be left without water if there were no investments in the network. However, no one took those warnings seriously.

How long will it take to solve the problem of normal water supply? Our source says that any serious interventions must last several years. Everyone is waiting for a loan from the EBRD of 50 million KM and relying on the power of money. But interventions in water supply will take a long time, no matter how much money is involved.

- You have to dig up the street, stop or redirect traffic, then simultaneously replace sewage pipes along with water pipes, relocate water and sewage connections. Only after that should the street be asphalted. It's not just digging with excavators, because in high-altitude areas, drilling and manual digging will be necessary. So, this type of construction work requires a longer period.

Prime Minister Konaković's claims at today's press conference that he is staking his political fate on solving Sarajevo's water supply can now be called a mistake. Already next year, it could be said that even the "newest" ViK director did not meet his expectations.