Employment at the Sarajevo Canton Health Center: Acquaintances by request, others on hold

Slobodan Trninic, former director of the Public Institution Sarajevo Canton Health Center (KS), hired nearly 600 people without following procedures between 2007 and 2010. Among those hired were his acquaintances, relatives of the institution's Management Board members, and children of long-term employees, reports the Patria News Agency.  

Journalists from the Center for Investigative Journalism (CIN) contacted these employees or their family members, and they stated that they were hired based on a request to Director Trninic. However, CIN discovered that there were those for whom a request could not help, and who did not get a job even after years of waiting.

During this period, a Conclusion of the KS Government was in effect, requiring the consent of the cantonal Ministry of Health for every new employment.

Since the hiring was unplanned, there was a lack of money for the salaries of new employees, so the director allocated 16.3 million KM from funds intended for medical supplies and the institution's own revenues.

The Sarajevo Cantonal Prosecutor's Office has been investigating this case for almost four years. Before them, the Federal Police Administration (FUP) conducted an investigation against Trninic and four of his associates. It all began at the end of 2009 when a group of citizens reported illegal hirings.

Trninic was the director of the KS Health Center for ten years. During that period, he and his family became owners of valuable real estate. The healthcare institution he managed is the largest primary healthcare institution in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). It consists of nine municipal health centers and 78 clinics.

Four Years on the Priority List

The FUP suspects Trninic of neglecting his legal obligation for four years to report the need for new employees to the KS Employment Service, which then announces a competition. However, the management of the KS Health Center adopted a Rulebook on Work, empowering the director to hire people without a competition.

Samir Konjhodzic, a senior physiotherapist, submitted a job application to the Health Center in January 2005. Five months later, Director Trninic responded to his request, stating that he had been placed on a "priority list" and would be contacted when the need arose for that position.

Konjhodzic never received a call from the Health Center. According to data obtained by CIN, Trninic hired one physiotherapist and 55 physiotherapy technicians in four years.

Konjhodzic says he was willing to work a job below his qualifications. "It was of vital importance for me to get a job."

In March 2009, he wrote to Trninic again, reminding him of his application. Two days later, he received a response stating that there were no new hirings at the Health Center, in accordance with the acts of the Health Insurance Fund (ZZO).

The ZZO makes a financial plan each year, stating how many employees of the Health Center it finances. For 2009, the same number of employees was planned as in the previous year.

Despite this, Trninic hired 211 new employees that year.

Among them was Svetlana Kapetanovic, sixty years old, the wife of Osman Kapetanovic, then head of the KS Sanitary Inspection.

Kapetanovic is a specialist in transfusion medicine and had previously worked at the Federal Institute for Transfusion Medicine as the head of the Blood Processing Department. In the fall of 2008, the Institute filed a report against her with the Sarajevo Cantonal Prosecutor's Office on suspicion of altering patient blood group data.

In January 2009, Kapetanovic concluded an agreement on the termination of employment with the Institute at her own request and, in the same year, was hired at the "Centar" Health Center. With additional training, she worked there as a family doctor until her retirement. When asked by a CIN journalist how she got hired at the Health Center, Kapetanovic said: "I don't know, my husband submitted the papers."

Although she said her husband did not know Slobodan Trninic, Osman Kapetanovic, also a doctor by profession, told the CIN journalist that they were from the same generation. He did not want to discuss whether this helped his wife get hired.

"Acquaintances are a private matter," he added.

In March 2015, the Cantonal Prosecutor's Office suspended the investigation against Svetlana Kapetanovic because the evidence in her case was illegal, meaning it was obtained without a court order. No disciplinary proceedings were ever initiated against her before the Medical Chamber, and the Institute says they do not know why that did not happen.

Some Crazy Luck

According to CIN's investigation, Trninic hired at least six more of his acquaintances or children of long-term employees of the institution and members of the Management Board at the Health Center.

One of them is Dr. Mahira Kukavica-Durić, daughter of Fadila Kukavica, a retired doctor who worked at the "Stari Grad" Health Center. Kukavica says that when her daughter applied for a job, preference was given to employees' children.

"Listen, realistically, it's logical," she says, adding: "I have such a high opinion of Mr. Trninic because he always took care to help our children first."

Kukavica says her daughter had exceptionally high grades, that no one lobbied for her job, and that it was simply "some crazy luck."

In addition to being an employee's daughter, Mahira is also the daughter-in-law of Amira Durić, who was the president of the Health Center's Management Board from 2005 to 2009. Durić denies having intervened in any way for her daughter-in-law's job.

Mahira Kukavica-Durić has not worked at the "Stari Grad" Health Center since 2010 and was not available for an interview with CIN journalists.

According to the Health Center's Statute, the general director is responsible for his work to the Management Board, which decides on his appointment and dismissal, with the prior consent of the KS Minister of Health.

Ferid Selmanovic, whose son Mirsel, an economics graduate, now works in the Health Center's Procurement Department, was on the Management Board with Durić.

The Selmanovics did not wish to discuss employment with the CIN journalist.

The jobs were also given to two children of Fata Mujan, a technical secretary at the "Centar" Health Center, who has worked at this institution for over 35 years. Since 2007, her daughter Anela has worked as a physiotherapy technician, and her son Alen as a record keeper. Mujan says her children just brought their papers to the Health Center and submitted them.

"I didn't lobby for anything. Although, naturally, when they brought the papers there, they knew they were my children. Did that give them some privilege (...)", says Mujan.

Unlike her, Dr. Izet Hočko, president of the Union of Doctors of Medicine and Dentistry of the Sarajevo Health Center, says he himself asked Trninic to hire his son. He is disappointed that he had to wait 10 months for his son to get a job as a laboratory technician at the "Novi Grad" Health Center.

"I think I pushed it through only by my persistence; after all, I am a specialist doctor, I am an experienced doctor, I have been with the institution for a long time and have merits for this institution," he says.

Bypassing Rules

Trninic hired 587 people without a competition in four years.

The hiring process went as follows: the candidate would submit an application to Trninic, have an interview with him, and then go to the Human Resources Department for information about their position. The candidate would first sign a fixed-term contract, and after some time, a permanent contract. The entire process from submitting the application to signing the contract would take only a few days.

During the period when Trninic was hiring these people, a conclusion of the KS Government was in effect, ordering healthcare institutions to seek consent from the KS Ministry of Health for every new employment. CIN attempted to obtain data on which employees had consent for employment, but the Ministry and the Health Center state they do not have that documentation.

After four years of illegal hiring, with employees leaving for other positions or retiring, the Health Center had 514 employees at the end of 2010 for whom the ZZO did not provide funds. To gather money for their salaries, Trninic annually took all funds from the Health Center's own revenues and a portion of the funds intended for the purchase of syringes, gauze, and cotton, as well as for utility payments. Due to all of this, patients did not receive quality healthcare.

Today, the Health Center is most lacking radiologists, otorhinolaryngologists, and neuropsychiatrists. According to the list of employees obtained by CIN, out of the 587 people Trninic hired, only one is a specialist neuropsychiatrist. On the other hand, the following were hired for various positions: five salespersons, two textile technicians, two arrangers, two cooks, a textile finisher, an agricultural technician, a pastry chef, a florist, an upholsterer, a teacher...

Student Real Estate

The complaint from the group of citizens, forwarded to the FUP, stated that "part of the new employees are taking bribes" and that Slobodan Trninic's family members own real estate with a market value exceeding 400,000 KM.

Although union representatives say they heard from colleagues that they paid money for jobs, the CIN journalist spoke with at least 15 Health Center employees, and all said that no one asked them for money for employment.

"I am surrounded by people who say they paid money, but no one wants to talk – not only because they are afraid but because they also participated in that criminal act," says Izet Hočko, president of the Union of Doctors of Medicine and Dentistry.

According to data obtained by CIN, Trninic and his family own valuable real estate acquired during his tenure as head of the Health Center, from December 2001 to August 2011. In 2002, his son Slobodan, as a student, bought a 73-square-meter apartment in the center of Sarajevo for 107,500 KM, and eight years later, a garage in the same street, worth 30,000 KM.

His daughter Sanja bought a 93-square-meter apartment in the center of Sarajevo in 2010 for 233,500 KM as a twenty-three-year-old student.

Not far from them, Trninic owns a 144-square-meter apartment that he bought from the Municipality of Centar in 2007 using certificates for just over 23,000 KM. With his wife, he owns a dulum of land in Blažuj, which they bought in December 2000 for 6,000 KM. Today, there is a mountain house with a large yard on that site.

Trninic refused to speak with the CIN journalist. Through his wife, he conveyed that he did not wish to provide any answers to anyone. During the investigation, he gave a statement to the FUP in which he said he did not feel responsible in any way and that he had acted in accordance with the law. As stated in the FUP report, he indirectly admitted that employee recruitment was carried out without notifying the KS Employment Service, solely based on the candidate's submitted application, and that he did not have the consent of the KS Ministry of Health for the hiring of new employees.

His case was forwarded to the KS Cantonal Prosecutor's Office in 2012. As announced by that institution, the case is still in the investigative phase.