(Podgorica, 2 October 2012) – The launch of the Niksic-Podgorica railway without finalizing all the required permits, in order to score pre-election points with the electorate, is a truly irresponsible move by the ruling coalition. This is particularly worrying in light of the tragic train derailment that occurred in Bioce several years ago.
The railway line was launched in spite of the fact that all the work on this route still hasn’t been completed, nor is there adequate information confirming whether all the technical and safety standards on the route have been met. This means that the safety and security of citizens and travellers along this route hasn’t been secured.
Portions of the route remain unprotected since there are no traffic signals, while today workers employed by the Railways of Montenegro continued to work on approach roads (even though trains are using the route at speeds over 50 km/hr).
Similarly, its worth asking how exactly this very slow ride (averaging 60 km/hr) became one of the most expensive track reconstruction projects ever. The six year endeavour to reconstruct the route cost Montenegro’s citizens some €70-million (i.e. each km of the track cost more than €1-million).
Due to such obvious abuses of power, including the launch of rail service on an insecure route in order to score election points by demonstrating the alleged investment ‘success’ of the ruling coalition, MANS today submitted criminal charges against Zarija Franovic, the director of the “Railway Infrastructure.”
The pre-election launch of the reconstructed route is only one of the many obvious violations of the Law on Financing Political Parties, as well as other laws.
Another example was the Labor Fund which paid out severance pay to workers in the lead up to the elections. In 2010, the government set aside €2.3-million for this fund, while in 2011 it set aside €2.1-million. This means that in non-election years the government wasn’t concerned about worker demands. Only in the face of elections did the government’s officials suddenly remember the workers, deciding suddenly to go into debt to pay severance to 3,115 workers at tax-payer expense (thus violating the Law on the Budget).
Till this day, the list of workers who were paid severance are unknown. We thus cannot determine whether these lists contain ruling party loyalists and activists as a criteria for receiving severance. For this reason, MANS calls upon workers, with rights to severance pay but who have not received it to date, to call us and report all irregularities.
In the end, the Government shouldn’t impute to MANS the intention of challenging its integrity, since it is the government itself that is ruining its own image by violating numerous laws and adopting countless damaging policies (whose consequences are felt by all in Montenegro). The eventual responsibility of state officials for these violations will eventually have to be determined.
