International organisations helping Bosnia and Herzegovina tackle the migrant issue have received 33.7 million Euro through the Instruments for Pre-Accession (IPA) and the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO), according to official data N1 received from relevant sources.

The funds that the European Union (EU) allocated, according to the European Commission, is not the money previously earmarked for Bosnia and Herzegovina and its citizens. The state institutions were given a special amount of 2.3 million Euro for the migrant issue, which makes the total amount of 36 million that the EU secured for the migrant issue.

“The funds were not directly paid to bank accounts of the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but were used to purchase the equipment which is used directly by the institutions in charge of migrations in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” according to the European Commission.

Bosnia's IOM office said the amount they received has to last until the end of March 2020, while significant part has already been utilised.

“Some 5 million Euro was spent for setting up of (migrant) centres in Bosnia and Herzegovina. What does that mean? For instance, Usivak (centre) used to be a complex of wooden huts when it was given to the Ministry of Security. There was nothing else there except the wooden huts. Everything had to be renovated. Next, some 3.5 million Euro was allocated to different institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina in equipment. Or let's say in Bihac, there were street lights, cleaning of public zones. The rest of money goes to humanitarian assistance,” said Head of the IOM Mission in Bosnia, Peter Van der Auweraert.

But, the EU was not the only donor. In one of its reports submitted to Bosnia's Security Ministry in 2018, the IOM said that the head office of the IOM took part with 350,000 US dollars in the total amount of 12.3 million US dollars provided by European donors. Furthermore, the Council of Europe's Development Bank provided 1.15 million dollars, the UK government 726,000 dollars and Qatar's Humanitarian Organisation 364,000 dollars.

“It will be necessary to present details on the money spending every three months,” said Security Minister Dragan Mektic.

Although it was a general opinion in public that institutions are spending on other purposes large amounts of money that was originally aimed for migrants and refugees, it proved to be wrong.

According to the IOM's office in Bosnia, some 7,000 migrants are currently in Bosnia and Herzegovina, mostly in the Una-Sana Canton, Sarajevo and Tuzla.

The Vucjak camp on the northwest was closed this Wednesday due to extremely inadequate conditions, and migrants were relocated to two temporary centres near Sarajevo. However, the majority of migrants remained in centres in the northwest, near the border with Croatia, as they hope to continue their journey to western Europe.