Some 700 Global Ispat Coke Plant (GIKIL) workers have arrived in Sarajevo where they plan to stage protests in front of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) entity building asking for the postponement of the order to cease business operation of this Lukavac based company due to environmental issues they caused.
A total of 14 buses came from Lokavac, the seat of the company, in central Bosnia, near the city of Tuzla. They called on all relevant institutions not to shut down the company which employs around 1,000 workers.
Head of the workers’ union Mirsad Imamovic said for N1 that they demand a meeting with the FBiH government about this issue.
He noted that the order to cease business operations directly threatens some 1000 jobs in this company are directly threatened as well as jobs in 450 companies doing business with the GIKIL company.
“We want the opportunity to work on environmental projects. The workers have always insisted on ecology and the protection of jobs,” Imamovic added. “We began our first investments worth BAM 6 million in 2008, and so far we invested BAM 3 million (soma EUR 1.5 million).”
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Last Friday, two cantonal prosecutors and an environmental pollution police investigator from the Tuzla Canton entered the GIKIL company to see whether the company continued dumping pollutants uncontrollably.
The GIKIL workers union said their company is the biggest exporter from the Tuzla Canton and that this company has never had better business results. They added the company has the money to invest in environmental protection.
The company attorneys have filed a motion to postpone the decision to cease business operations, to the FBiH Inspection Administration, which was issued in late August.
(EUR 1 = BAM 1.95)
