USK to Budget via Online Session, Battle for Power in the Foreground

SARAJevo, (Patria) - The Assembly of the Una-Sana Canton will convene tomorrow, where, as announced, the cantonal budget and financial plans of the Health Insurance Fund and the Employment Service should be adopted, which will enable the financial operation of the canton and cantonal institutions.

Several deputies requested an online session, and they will work via the Zoom platform. It is mandatory for deputies to have their cameras turned on during the determination of the quorum, discussion, and voting. Representatives of the European Commission in BiH will also follow the session via the platform.

The absence of a budget is old news. Instead of that novelty – the Assembly of USK is introducing a new one. For transparency, they say, the sessions will be held online with a live broadcast on the Radio of the Una-Sana Canton.

“I have several requests from trade unions demanding the adoption of the budget, and they are not interested in political games, they are interested in earned salaries,” says Razim Halkić, Speaker of the Assembly of USK (SDP).

Due to the financial blockade, the police cannot get fuel, thirty vehicles are parked because they are unregistered, and workers received their last salary forty days ago, which is why they have been organizing a warning strike since yesterday, only doing what is necessary.

“These are mostly operational matters, we have to deal with serious criminal offenses, major traffic accidents. These are cases where the police must go out into the field. They will not respond to anything else,” says Mahmut Alagić, president of the Police Union of USK.

Healthcare workers received their January salary, albeit lower than contracted, and are therefore waiting for the adoption of the Fund's financial plan, which will enable the application of the collective agreement. Unlike them, employees of the Employment Service did not receive their January salary and do not even have heating in their offices. However, they say, they are more concerned about the beneficiaries waiting for their benefits.

“We have about 32,000 unemployed persons registered. Of these, about a thousand are beneficiaries of monetary awards and over 20,000 beneficiaries of health insurance through the Employment Service. We are under both legal and moral obligation to start these payments as soon as possible,” states Emir Toromanović, director of the Employment Service of USK.

Numerous scandals are in the shadow of tomorrow's session, from phone calls about the distribution of positions, for which a case has been opened in the Prosecutor's Office regarding who offered ministerial positions to whom and who recorded whom and how, to the procedure of scheduling the session, i.e., whether the deputies received the materials on time.

“I have not said whether I will support the budget or not. The process of submitting the budget itself is more than late compared to all the deadlines prescribed by law,” says Jasmin Musić, president of the SDA Club in the Assembly of USK.

And no one is talking about the content of the budget itself, which should bring an increase in salaries for healthcare workers, police, and educators; that is the secondary concern for the authorities now. The primary one is certainly how to gain power: it is an election year, and the ability to manage the budget is a good starting position.