Prime Minister of Canton Sarajevo (CS) Elmedin Konakovic said that he is very proud of the political climate in the Assembly of CS. Changes in the coalition passed without much jam and with mutual respect, and the budget for 2016 was supported by the opposition.
“In the first year of the mandate on the Department of health insurance we had an increase of 7 %, which is indicating that we had new work places. The number of unemployed will soon be below 70,000 and this is the result of government at multiple levels. In the next month, we can expect 700 new intern places,” said Konakovic.
“We had last investments in water supply network in CS in period 1997-2000. Therefore, we have terrible problems and the second problems are illegal consumers. It is impossible to expect for the reduction to stop this year, but from the plan that we recently introduced, which includes five operations and investing 4 million BAM, it is clear that we can reduce these night time reductions in 2 or 3 hours. We allocated 2 million BAM for detection, and with the arrangement with the EBRD and the first tranche that amounts to 10 million BAM, we will be able to distribute several teams that will work around the clock on repairing the network. We were slowed down by the decision of the Constitutional Court of the FBiH, which found that CS unconstitutional manages municipal economy, but we overcame it,” said Konakovic.
“We can expect the end of reduction, when taking in consideration the potential of water that Sarajevo has in the amount of seven million m3, in the middle of next year or at the latest at the end of 2017. Then we would have a stable network and we would go with its modernization in 2018, we would introduce new measuring devices, devices that immediately recognize the problem etc. We are here for a year and we said that we will solve it in our mandate, and if we do not fulfill the promise it would be a great failure.”
How reliable are the optimistic announcements of the upcoming start of construction of the first transversal?
“We have two problems there. Originally designed first transversal is too expensive, we have about 100 million BAM of expropriation. We already have proposals for some corrections, but these are not fundamental changes. I think we need to consider shifting the route in order to save costs for property and legal issues. We do not give up on it, it is too important for us as it would solve the problem of development of Vogosca or one part of it. We spoke with people from Roads of FBiH to start with redesigning,” stated Konakovic.
At today’s session, we will probably have the Law on tourism of CS. What do you expect from this law and why are you insisting on it?
Tourism is our primary interest, and the resistance is coming from people who are losing their benefits. They argue that we cannot take control of the Tourist Board of CS, for which at the moment we do not know how much it earns, on what it is spending the money, how many employees there is etc. We have information that the tourist tax is charged only in the amount of 10 %, and the people who work at the Tourist Board must be responsible to the Assembly of CS.
(Source: N. N./Klix.ba)