A year has passed since the local elections in Kosovo; the authorities in municipalities with Serbian majority are not satisfied with the treatment of central Kosovo institutions. The government in Pristina reduces the budget from year to year, so often beside salaries for employees there is no funding for the development of Serbian communities.
During the last census in Kosovo, Serbs have been partially registered. By decreasing the number of inhabitants in the Serbian municipalities, the government in Pristina has reduced their budget.
“Last year’s budget was around 900 000, this year has been reduced to 796 000, which means that municipalities with that money, apart covering wages, cannot have any capital investment,” said Srecko Spasic, Mayor of Klokot/Kllokot.
And in other municipalities in Kosovo Morava area, the situation is the same. Municipalities are not allowed to decide on the privatization of socially owned enterprises on its territory, even when the local council votes that it is an object of general interest.
“Privatization is another lever that is used for acts towards us. In fact, we had several cooperatives in our territory and some factories’ actuators that existed in the old system in the municipality of Gnjilane/Gjilan. A number of them were privatized. Last week we received from them that we are obliged to move out music school, which is located in the premises of the cooperative in Partes,” says Dragan Nikolic, Mayor of Partes / Pasjane.
In the north of the province, the four municipalities still have not received a penny from the Fund for Development, planned exclusively for them.
“It is about 4.7 million euros, but that money is not used because of legal proceedings created as a problem of non-promptness of service of the European Union in Pristina,” says Aleksandar Jablanovic, president of the “Serbian List”.
Serbian representative in the Fund, in the past year, was not able to obtain a contract with rights and obligations as a member of the Fund. Serbs from the north seek a basic contract for a representative and start of the distribution of funds. Belgrade has a message for Pristina.
“If they want to have the participation and support of the Serbian community, they need to earn this support with the support to the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija in their efforts to survive and stay and live normally. So we need to give up from thinking that for Albanians is bad everything that for Serbs is good,” says Marko Djuric, director of the Office for KiM.
