UK claims there is money but the KS Government won't give it: Holiday pay not planned even in September, is a hot autumn coming?

By: Amra Vrabac

"There is money when there is no stealing," said KS Prime Minister Edin Forto in May 2022.

Three years later, the KS Government led by Forto's successor Nihad Uk (Our Party) adopted austerity measures due to insufficient inflow of funds into the KS Budget.

It took Prime Minister Uk five days to comment on the austerity measures, which were made public by the media, not the KS Government which likes to boast about transparency. But apparently not in this case.

Thus, Uk stated today that the conclusions on austerity measures of the Sarajevo Canton Government were made with the clear intention of balancing revenues and expenditures in the current year. And there are just over four months left until the end of the current year.

"We remind you that with the infamous reduction of the weighting factor, Sarajevo Canton and its citizens have been deprived of 350 million KM in just three years, and of course, this had to be felt. In order to reduce the damage caused to Sarajevo by the denial of the weighting factor, we have adopted a set of preventive measures which include, among other things: rationalization of costs in all budget users, temporary postponement of planned capital investments that are not so urgent, optimization of public procurement and administrative costs, stricter control of travel and representation expenses, directing the budget reserve exclusively to urgent obligations, and continuing to settle court judgments from previous periods," explained Prime Minister Uk.

He also points out that Sarajevo Canton is not in danger of financial collapse, as these are precautionary measures to avoid scenarios that we are currently seeing at other levels of government, such as in the Republika Srpska entity.

"From this budget, we continue to pay tens of millions of KM in court claims, which were produced by irresponsible decisions of previous governments," stated Uk.

One of the measures is also the suspension of all public competitions, except for essential jobs, but Uk did not elaborate on this today.

A rough estimate is that the Trojka (coalition) hired about 2,500 people in the public sector of Sarajevo Canton in the last six years. And over 2 million KM were spent on work contracts alone during 2024. Some ministers used the legal possibility and appointed advisors whose monthly income is around 3,000 KM.

When the KS Minister of Finance, Afan Kalamujić, was asked about the payment of holiday pay at one of the last sessions, he said it would be paid in the autumn. Today, Uk did not say a word about the payment of holiday pay.

The Operational Plan for the third quarter (July, August, September), which can be found on the website of the KS Ministry of Finance, clearly states that the payment of holiday pay is not planned, i.e., the allocated amount is 0 KM.

The KS Government has never even completed the payment of the difference in subsidies for young people buying their first property under the public call from 2023. More than 1,000 applicants are waiting for an additional amount of about 5,000 KM, for which the Government should allocate about 5.5 million KM. And there were no public calls during 2024 and 2025.

Although a special law has been sent to the parliamentary procedure based on which a legal payment from the KS Budget would be made, the KS Assembly session has never been scheduled yet.

These days, the opposition has also been dormant, not considering it urgent to discuss the financial stability of Sarajevo Canton even after the publication of data from the KS Ministry of Finance.

Several trade unions have submitted requests to the KS Government for the payment of holiday pay, but there has been no official response. September and autumn are at the door, and obligations are piling up. Another hot political autumn awaits us, and instead of rain, resignations should be falling.

And while Forto was saying that there is money when there is no stealing, Uk came up with a variation: "We have the money, but we are not giving it to you."