The public roads company of Bosnia’s Serb-dominated region, ‘Putevi Republike Srpske’, has first invested two million BAM to build a set of toll booths near the northern town of Laktasi, but then paid another million BAM for them to be destroyed because they were built at the wrong location.

Putevi Republike Srpske is the public road company of Republika Srpska (RS), one of the two semi-autonomous regions Bosnia and Herzegovina is comprised of.  

The destruction of the booths started on Friday with a small ceremony, headed by the RS Transport and Communications Minister Nedjo Trninic and Putevi Republike Srpske Director, Nenad Nesic.  

Nobody is facing any consequences for the booths being initially constructed at the wrong location at which 49 traffic accidents have already occurred. 

A member of the Party of Democratic Progress (PDP), an opposition party in the RS, Drasko Stanivukovic, brought a red tape and scissors to the scene as an ironic gift for Minister Trninic.  

“Since they are ceremonially opening the closing down and destruction of toll booths, we brought them scissors and the tape so they can take a picture of themselves next to their embarrassment,” Stanivukovic said.  

But there is no reason to be embarrassed, according to the Putevi Republike Srpske Director.  

“As soon as I was appointed head of the public company in 2016, I identified this problem and I included it into the operational plan for 2017,” Nesic said.

“But we did not manage to do it then and now we are beginning with the implementation,” he said.  

Minister Trninic initiated a disciplinary procedure against the former management of the public company, but competent authorities ruled that nobody is to blame.  

“The Prosecutor’s Office, The Interior Ministry and everyone else who got involved in this process made a final decision saying that there is no blame and we cannot comment on it,” said Minister Trninic.