Despite significant international financial and technical assistance implemented over the past years as well as administrative procedures, that have been improved to certain extend, municipalities and towns in BiH do not provide enough ground for independent monitoring and evaluation of the functioning of authorities during and after their mandates. Lack of necessary information, precise parameters and systemic tracking of changes during a mandate period, makes a realistic assessment of success of work of any municipal Mayor impossible.

This is one of the conclusions presented in the Report of the Centrer for Civil Initiatives on 20 October in the premises of the Delegation of the European Commission. The Report focuses on the quality of life of citizens in the municipalities of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This project was launched at the end of 2008 and covers the period between January and June 2009. It was implemented with the assistance of the European Union, and covers 11 municipalities and towns:  Tuzla, Novo Sarajevo, Mostar, Doboj, Pale, Foča, Trebinje, Široki Brijeg, Livno, Bijeljina, Zenica, Banja Luka, Bihać and Travnik.

“Whatever they do, the officials elected to the local authorities simply can present their work as a successful one, while the citizens are not in position to objectively follow the work of the mayors during their mandates, which could potentially serve as grounds for launching the process of revoking the mayors or as the basis for a reasonable decisions in the local elections”, said the CCI Spokeswoman Ms Majda Behrem Stojanov at the press conference.

Project Manager, Mr Siniša Bencun, spoke about concrete numbers, using slides and charts. “Despite the fact that the budgetary revenue in 2009 decreased by 30% due to financial crisis, nothing is still being done in  the sense of reducing public administrations or their expenditures. Thus, BiH is far from its neighbours when it comes to the number of employees in administration, and even further from the European standards” – said Bencun. He mentioned the example of Slovenia, having 2 administrative workers per 1,000 inhabitants, while in BiH, namely in Mostar, there are 5 administrative workers per 1,000 inhabitants. “This does not mean that the service is 5 times better”, added Bencun. “On the contrary, this does not provide a better quality of the services the administration is to provide to the citizens”.

In terms of the budget rebalancing, Bencun said that the material expenditures of the local administrations were the first ones to get cut, as well as expenditures for sports and culture, capital investments, while in the areas not affected by the reduction, such as the social protection system, the quality of the service is decreasing…

There are enormous differences from one municipality to another when it comes to the utilities sector. Numbers show that citizens of Tuzla pay the highest price for water supply and sewage. This price is three times higher than paid by the citizens of Zenica. Heating is the cheapest in Doboj and the most expensive in Novo Sarajevo and Banja Luka. In the area of primary health care situation is the worst in Livno and Banja Luka, where there are 2,700 patients per one physician, while in Doboj and Tuzla the number is three times lower, 700 of them per one physician. When it comes to unemployment, the situation is the most unfavourable in Livno, where there is one employed person per 8 inhabitants. Municipalities allocate very small amounts of money for the functioning of local communities and for health care, while the situation with scholarships and education and construction and reconstruction of roads is somewhat better.

“The fact that definitely grabs attention is that a monthly income of the Members of Municipal Councils ranges between 220 and 1,225 KM. The lowest salaries are paid in Livno and the highest in Mostar, where 23% of the budget is spent on salaries of the administration”, said Bencun.

“We specially want to emphasise the City of Mostar, as it is very interesting that in this City the authorities have enough money to maintain a cumbersome administrative apparatus, while, at the same time, in the 21st century they will allow for the City to loose one of the oldest cultural institutions in Herzegovina – the National Theatre in Mostar. Irresponsibility of the strongest political parties has culminated in form of incompetence of the Members of the City Council to reach an agreement on the appointment of the Mayor for more than a year after the elections, which makes the citizens of this town hostages of political games” – added the Spokesperson Behrem Stojanov.

Finally, one can conclude that BiH is, after all,at the very bottom of the scale in terms of the quality of services provided, while it goes way beyond the European standards in respect to the size and cost of its administration.