Government's Exhaustion of BH Telecom

The Government is waging a war against BH Telecom on two fronts. On one, it wants to sell it to a foreign buyer, and on the other, to take control of BH Telecom's Union, which has more than 3,000 members. Because of this, it is of utmost importance for Prime Minister Novalić and his associates to remove the current Union President Fikret Alić.

The Union has strongly opposed the Government, whose intention is to partially or completely sell the largest telecom operator in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Or ultimately, in the collective agreement that the Government needs to sign with BH Telecom, the Union is demanding a clause that would protect workers with severance pay in case the new owner wants to get rid of some employees, which the Government does not agree to. The same pattern was applied in March by "Hrvatski telekom", which paid 60,000 KM in severance to each of the 60 laid-off workers. The Federation Government does not accept such protective mechanisms from the Union - it is easier to sell a company that has no obligation to workers - so the Collective Agreement between BH Telecom and the Government has remained unsigned for months. At the same time, BH Telecom is the only state-owned company that still does not have a signed agreement with the Government.

The Government, i.e., the SDA, or to put it most honestly, part of the SDA, may also have political interests in removing the management of the BH Telecom Union. If they succeed in this, they would be sure that in the next five months, until the elections, there will be no strike by the company's workers.

The SDA is also thinking long-term. No one can predict the results of the October elections. If the SDA loses the elections, the Union could be used to discipline the future Government and management of BH Telecom.

The very idea of selling BH Telecom seems insane. Because, even with sloppy operations and years of partisan draining, BH Telecom achieved a net profit of 92.8 million marks in 2016, an increase compared to 78.4 million in 2015. There is no doubt that BH Telecom needs serious restructuring and a more responsible management approach towards the company. But it is only right that these matters be decided by experts, not politics.

What would citizens gain from the sale of BH Telecom? It can be said that they would gain nothing, just as citizens of neighboring countries who sold their national telecom operators gained nothing. What was the money invested in and where was it spent that the Government of the BiH entity Republika Srpska earned from the sale of the Banja Luka telecom to Telekom Srbije for 646 million euros in 2006? The price of calls has not decreased by a single cent. In the case of the sale of BH Telecom, political parties would again benefit the most. After years of siphoning money from the company, they would now also skim the cream off the sale.

If BH Telecom must be sold to someone, then, for example, the buyers could be the citizens of the Federation, as Serbia did with one of its telecoms. Finally, it is foreseen that telecom operators worldwide will very soon become a channel through which all payment transactions will be conducted. Cash payments will become less and less important in the future. In contrast, the trend of online payments is becoming increasingly widespread. Residents of Nordic countries have long been accustomed to paying by card, and now they can do so by phone as well. Their governments were also pioneers in providing online services. And they did not sell their national telecoms.