"There is not even half of the coal that is needed for stable operation during the winter at the landfills of the thermal power plants 'Nikola Tesla' A and B, the coal has less energy value than it is calculated on, the regular overhaul of the mining machines was skipped wherever possible, skipped there are also regular overhauls of the thermal power plant blocks for which the time has come... If it's any consolation, they say that this winter will be mild, so maybe it won't hurt as much as it could".
No, this text was not written these days. It was written in mid-September 2017 by a journalist "Times” Zoran Majdin under the title "Restrictions in announcement" ("Time" 1393). Since then, nothing seems to have changed for the better, as we witnessed in the past few days after "heavy and wet" snow was blamed for leaving more than 90.000 people without power. Many thought then: if this kind of miserable snow can cause such a disaster, what if it really fell?
Majdin explained what the real problems were four years ago: "The direction in which the Serbian electricity industry will go was hinted at five years ago (meaning in 2012), when Obrenovac restaurateur Milorad Grcic, an activist and local official of the Serbian Progressive Party, was appointed to the position general director of the Kolubara mines, and especially when two years later he advanced to the position of general director of Elektroprivreda Srbije".
The newly elected President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, visited the once most generous, but by then dried-up Field D of the Kolubara mines for Labor Day in 2017, and curtly announced that there were still "some problems with electricity"; that "some landslides have appeared on the mine", and that in this sense the state will open the purse and help with 250 million euros for the purchase of new equipment, and that in return it expects "only good results".
"You do a good job, and then don't worry about anything else," Vučić said on that occasion and announced higher salaries and pensions than ever, declared the beginning of a better life and the imminent arrival of the golden age, as well as that the price of electricity will not rise.
"Of course, none of that happened: those 250 million were never mentioned again," writes Majdin four years ago.
And further: "Something has come true: already at the end of May, there was a transfer of the plan by almost 50 percent, measured in tons of mined coal, admittedly of the lowest quality, but because of this, the investment repair of the Tamnava Zapad field was postponed until better days."
"As explained in the monthly report by Slobodan Mitrović, the executive director for the technical affairs of coal production, due to the 'technological situation on field D', translated into understandable language - there is not enough coal, and by the way, it is not working, the repair of which takes about a month it was postponed to the second half of August. However, in the August report, admittedly preliminary, the repair of field D is not mentioned."
"That postponement of investment repairs, both mines and mining equipment, is a constant of Grcic's actions. When he sat down in the chair of the general director of the Kolubara mines, he reduced maintenance costs, both current and investment - the warehouses for spare parts needed for current maintenance have been almost empty for the fourth year, and due to banal breakdowns, the machines are standing for several days.
Over time, tailings removal was reduced to scratching, regular annual overhauls were skipped as much as possible, and all forces were focused on coal production, because the boss likes big numbers."
"As an acquaintance, an excavator operator on field D, once explained, pumping water from the pits did take much longer than it could have, and it cost more than it could have, but already in the spring of 2015, everything returned to pre-flood state". Apart from production which has declined.
Majdin wrote four years ago about the "flagrant non-compliance with technical regulations, standards, norms and strategic plans", that "for years nothing, or almost nothing, has been done on the opening of new mines", that the story about fields E, G and Radljevo is "already a joke grew", and that "large funds were invested in those projects, but without any progress".
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