Vucic: Over 300 Complaints From Three Municipalities

President of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic said on Monday evening, summing up the first day of his tour through southwestern Serbia, that he had heard more than 300 questions and complaints from residents across three municipalities. That day he visited Prijepolje, Priboj and Nova Varos, and said there would have been noticeably fewer complaints had officials in local government listened to their fellow citizens better long before now.

“I’m satisfied with today’s visit, but there’s one problem, today wasn’t easy for me to sit through, there were more than 300 questions from people, across three municipalities, from different people, questions and complaints and grievances and everything else, there would be less of that if people in local governments had listened better.”

The tour began on August 10 and on its first day covered three municipalities in the Zlatibor District. Vucic said it is not always possible to meet everything residents ask for, but that hearing them out is the minimum local authorities owe.

“It isn’t always entirely possible to deliver what they ask for, but for the most part it is.”

He returned to the same point several times that evening, that listening to people is a job that cannot be handed off to someone else. “It’s important that we listen to what people have to say,” he said, adding that many had failed to grasp that part of the job.

Why Are Local Officials Uneasy?

The most concrete part of his remarks concerned the portal for citizen reports. Vucic for the first time openly linked the portal’s work to the mood among local leadership.

“I think this ‘Ko si bre ti’ portal has contributed a great deal, because now I see that many local officials, I won’t say they’re scared, but they’re a bit uneasy, because they see that we’re getting a kind of report from people who are mostly unhappy about something, and then they worry about what the reaction will be, whether from, I don’t know, party headquarters, or the top of the state, or anyone else.”

That, he said, has raised a degree of accountability to a higher level. We previously reported on the portal itself when the number of submitted reports reached 14,000, but until now the focus had been on that figure. Now the president described the reports as a record arriving outside the local administration, one that puts local officials in an uncomfortable position.

He also admitted that hearing it all out that day was not easy for him, since people are seeking solutions to problems sixty and seventy years in the making.

Factory, Sick Leave and the Raspberry Harvest

In Priboj, a cooperation agreement was signed covering the delivery of vehicles and special platforms, along with accompanying services, integration and technical support. Vucic said the contract covers 83 or 84 new chassis and that workers at FAP will not lose their jobs.

From there he turned to a topic politicians rarely raise, the difference between working for a state company and a private one, as seen by workers themselves.

“And do you know why people today want to work at FAP as if it were daily bread? To be completely open, that’s our problem too. It’s because it’s easier for them to work at FAP, because when the raspberry harvest and everything else comes around, they can take sick leave, not show up for three months, because the state won’t fire them, while in a private company that’s impossible.”

He added that workers accept pay 20,000 dinars lower just to stay at a state company, and that this creates a string of problems he feels obligated to point out.

What the Announced Projects Will Cost

The president listed several investments planned for the district:

• a bypass road in Zlatibor, worth 22 to 23 million euros in total, meant to ease congestion in the resort town’s center
• sports facilities that will cost the state over 20 million euros
• a plan for 15 football pitches, modeled on Antalya, for domestic and foreign clubs, where the grass alone will cost around 30 million euros

He tied that part of the plan to a condition he repeated several times that evening. “The country needs a stable economy, a full state treasury,” he said, adding that without factories running and a stable fiscal framework, none of the listed projects can be financed.

What the president described as a problem, local officials not listening enough, now has a measurable expression: the number of reports filed through the portal and the number of complaints raised across three municipalities in a single day. Whether the tour will be followed by personnel changes in local governments was not clear from Monday evening’s remarks.