Nezavisne novine: SARAJEVO – The Parliamentary Assembly of BiH has 26 commissions consisting of six to 12 members and for this work, besides the salaries, the MPs and the delegates receive remunerations.
As “Nezavisne” found out, as of March 1st this year, according to decision of the Joint Administrative Commission, for work in the commission 60 KM will be paid per session, and the members of the ad-hoc commissions will receive 240 KM per month until they finish their job.
Remzija Kadrić, the chairman of one of the commissions, said that they recently changed the decision on the payments to the commissions, but he could not specify the amount of the monthly remuneration for the members.
Roughly, just for one session of the permanent commission, if all the members are present, 360 to 720 KM is being spent.
“I am not sure that is the case. The increase is insignificant by the new decision; remuneration is increased by maybe 0.25 percent in comparison to before. Now we toughened the criteria a bit, because remunerations will not be paid to those who do not come to the sessions or do not participate in the work, or to those who appear at the beginning, and than leave the session”, said Kadrić.
According to the information from the web page of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH, of ten ad-hoc commissions, three were formed for the election of the main auditor and objections in relation with this vacancy procedure, and two were formed for the election of the ombudsman of BiH, and the process of the election lasts for almost two years now.
“The problem is not the great number of the commissions, because they are the filter in decision making process. Problems are the effects of their work, because they usually notify us that they could not agree on something and they regularly charge for that”, said Ševko Bajić, representative of the GROZD, the NGO which monitors the work of the BH parliament.
According to the data of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH, the House of Representatives has seven permanent nine-member commissions, and the House of Peoples has three six-member commissions, while there is six joint commissions of both Houses which have 12 members each. With that, in this convocation of the parliament, six ad-hoc commissions were formed counting six members each.
In 2007, for salaries and remunerations in the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH, 4.8 million KM was spent, counting the expenses of the commissions.
According to the data of the Parliamentary Assembly, the delegates of the House of Peoples participate in the work of the greater number of the commissions. So, Dušanka Majkić is a member of 11 commissions, Ivo Miro Jović of 10, Hazim Rančić of nine, and Rudo Vidović and Adem Ibrahimpašić of seven.
In the House of Representatives Velimir Jukić is a member of seven commissions, and Vinko Zorić, Drago Kalabić, Halid Genjac and Azra Hadžiahmetović are members of six commissions, while Niko Lozančić, Lazar Prodanović and Momčilo Novaković work in five commissions.
Only Beriz Belkić, deputy chairman of the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH, is not in any commission. In the parliamentary commission for gender equality, of nine members, only one is a woman.