Workers Apoteke Belgrade they say they haven't been paid for five months. That's why they protested on Thursday (September 4). Nor City of Belgrade Apoteka Beograd did not respond to our inquiry either - why the payments are late, as well as who is obliged to provide wages to the employees.
The president of the trade union "Opstanak" Jelena Šikuljak explains to "Vreme" why this situation happened.
"Neither the founder of the City of Belgrade, nor the ministry, nor anyone provides us with salaries from the city or republic budget. We ourselves have to collect for goods, salaries and other things from what we issue prescriptions and sell from medicines," says Šikuljak.
"We can't achieve that because we have old debts, and because of that, new ones arise. So it's a circle from which we can't get out on our own," indicated our interlocutor.
He goes on to say that the City of Belgrade does not provide enough money for medicines and medical supplies.
"They provide approximately one-sixth of the necessary funds, but only when they have money. Sometimes it is three to four months in a row. We can no longer manage to earn for all that. I say again, no one is obliged to pay us, even though we are a state-owned company, which I think is wrong," explains Šikuljak.
The founder of the company is the City of Belgrade, and pharmacies should make money from the sale of medicines. The employees of Apoteke Beograd are not on the payroll of the Republic Institute for Health Insurance, writes RTS.
Debt reprogramming was not enough
At the session of the Belgrade City Council at the beginning of March, a decision was made that the Secretariat for Health will take over the payment of the debt reprogramming of Apoteka Belgrade in the amount of 1,37 billion dinars, the media reported.
Neither Apoteka Belgrade nor the City of Belgrade answered what the actual debt is, as well as what the repayment plan is.
"We had a meeting with the City last year in September and we explained the problems we were facing. At that moment, one and a half salaries were late. We told them that the best thing would be for the City to find a solution. That is, for the state, some public institution, to take over the obligation to pay our salaries. We told them then that in that case we would be able to pay for these other debts ourselves," emphasizes our interlocutor.
He goes on to say that in December they received information that the debt reprogramming will be carried out. "We only got the reprogram sometime at the end of March. That was a few months later, when the debts increased even more. We were then three salaries late."
And that, according to our interlocutor, was again insufficient because it is approximately 60 percent of the debt.
"Our management decided to use that reprogramming to pay the debt for the six largest suppliers. There was nothing left for salaries and for small suppliers," emphasizes Šikuljak.
The consequences of that are that the big suppliers have given away some goods because now they no longer have the same trust as before, and the small ones have started complaining. While the employees "quit" because in the end there was nothing left for them.
Workers are leaving, pharmacies are closing, shelves are empty
More than 30 buildings of the state pharmacy institution Apoteke Belgrade have been closed for the past year, writes RTS.
"The pharmacies on the outskirts, in the villages, suffered the most, and about five to six pharmacies in the city center were also closed. This is the consequence of all this. We have now come to the point where we no longer even have enough money to have the entire range of certain medicines," says Šikuljak.
Our interlocutor says that the "psychological moment" burdens the workers the most - "you are not sure that you will be able to pay the loan installments, the bills. On the other hand, every day we have to blush in front of the patients and speak We have this medicine, we don't have this one.. It's exhausting when you repeat it 'a hundred times' in a shift of about seven hours”.
Currently, for example, there is not enough syrup for children, and the season of allergies and coughs has begun. "We don't have the most frequent medicines and we are sorry to send the children back, but what can we do. We don't even have all the antibiotics," points out Šikuljak.
"We don't know what the suppliers are going to give us. Are they going to give us everything we ask for or are they going to give us only some of what we asked for. It's just very frustrating to operate like that every day," he explains.
Since the problem with wages has been going on for a year, and the trade union "Opstanak" has been around for that long, Šikuljak says that many workers have quit their jobs so far. "People have worked for 20 or 30 years in this company and then move on without a dinar because they are not given any program for years of service. Those who retired did not receive a severance package of three salaries."
Apoteka Belgrade did not respond to the question of how many employees have resigned so far.
Why do workers oppose privatization?
The workers who protested on Thursday are against the privatization of the pharmacy. Why?
Šikuljak recalls that during the bombing, state pharmacies were on 24-hour duty and then they made the entire range of Galenika ointments, drops and more. That was, he says, their work obligation.
"During any state of emergency, private companies can close, but we work. Then you don't have any medicine available unless you have state pharmacies that are under a working obligation to be open," she explains.
She also cites the example of the floods in Obernovac and tells that her colleagues then went to the field to administer insulin therapy to patients who could not move.
"During the corona virus pandemic, for the first week or two, everyone was closed, and we worked. We made alcohol, sold masks, gloves, all without a margin. We didn't make any profit from it, but it was at the price that the suppliers gave", says Šikuljak.
He concludes that they cannot last more than two months.
"There will be no one to work. Everyone will leave. You can have pharmacies, but there will be no one to work in them because we can no longer suffer. Here, a year and three months have passed, our families are suffering, we are also suffering. We don't pass it on to the patients, but we can't go on like this forever."
