Kragujevac Authorities Getting their Town Ship-Shape

What to Do with the Unemployed

AIM Beograd, February 7, 2001

According to the plan of the first, comprehensive campaign of the town authorities of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) in Kragujevac all street vendors and counters outside the marketplace should be removed, illegal dumping areas cleaned and the problem of stray dogs resolved.

Altogether and at the same time! The campaign started with the removal of counters outside the marketplace which were blocking the central city streets and squares in larger Kragujevac settlements. In the early morning hours on January 29, town authorities, in cooperation with workers of the market, sanitary and communal inspection services, assisted by police patrols, started the town-cleaning campaign with determination.

The vendors peacefully and silently packed their counters and started towards the Town Hall where they organised the first demonstrations since the election of the new town authorities of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia. Shouting, "We want to work, we don't want to steal", "The red gang", "Thieves" and "We want changes", the dissatisfied vendors, of which the majority are employees of "Zastava", entered the Municipal Assembly building where, after waiting for some time, they were addressed by Mayor Vlatko Rajkovic and his closest associates.

The new town authorities, whose 100 days have just passed, had their "baptism of fire". It was accompanied by accusations that "citizens were used just as a voting machine", that life is getting worse from day to day and that the threshold of social poverty has been crossed. During talks with the town Assembly officials, a compromise solution was found to temporarily remove the counters, to postpone the campaign for 45 days and prepare identification cards so that every family could get a market counter and individuals receive social benefits.

Irrespective of the fact that the local officials can be pleased with themselves for finding the solution suitable to both the army of unemployed and the town authorities, the question remains how could they have even tried to resolve the essential issue of social poverty so matter-of-factly, before comprehensively studying the problem of "the flea market". Why wasn't the agreement between the local leaders and representatives of street vendors reached before, but instead individual officials allowed themselves to call these people "second-class citizens"? Also, why didn't town authorities talk to these people, whom the previous regime had driven out into the street, before launching the "town-cleaning campaign"? The more so as it is common knowledge that "Kragujevac represents a true social bomb" with the closed down "Zastava" and 20 thousand people on forced vacations, 18 thousand job seekers and another 14 thousand refugees from the territories of former Yugoslavia.

Branko is a worker of "Zastava" car factory, where he had worked for 10 years and was fired some six years ago. He was forced to start selling things in the street in order to support his wife and two children. Today, he is working as unlicenced street vendor in the city centre because, as he himself said, he is unable to pay 2,700 dinars to the municipality for a counter. He also told us that anyone who is able to pay that much is not freezing in the street.

He sells bright-coloured clocks which sound unusual waking alarm melodies. As he told us, this street work makes it possible for him and his family to survive, because his wife is also unemployed. He gets 300 dinars a month from "Zastava" and commented on the campaign of removing counters outside market-place wit the following words: "If they take this from me, I will be forced to steal".

Thirty-two-year old Dragana has never had a job, has two children and a husband, a "Zastava" worker on paid leave. She is sitting behind an improvised counter in the city centre and is selling woven slippers, tights and wrapping paper. She has been doing this for the last two years and makes just enough to pay for the rented flat and medicines for her older asthmatic son. She can't also pay the sum the municipality charges for the counter and says: "Where can I get so much money, when I barely make ends meet", adding that vendors are mostly young people who can bear the cold and hard working conditions in the street. "We shall leave the streets on our own, if they get us jobs", says Dragana and adds: "We have elected these authorities and now, they are chasing us with the police. It serves us right".

Milovan has spent his entire working life in Zastava's forging works where he achieved top results manufacturing forgings and was for years one of the best workers. During the past decade, the factory called him from time to time so that in the end he was forced to start selling things in the street, where he offers batteries, pens, key rings, soap and small tools. He says he would immediately go back to the factory and live like all normal people if only he had work: "This is misery. Just enough to survive. The campaign of the town authorities is unorganised and unbefitting the conditions in which people, in need of work, live. Why don't they give us work in the factory, as they have promised and then people would return to factories from which the Socialists have thrown them out", says Milovan standing in front of his counter, without operating licence because he cannot pay the enormous rent the municipality charges.

In their statements issued after the "revolt" of street vendors, the town officials expressed their satisfaction over the reached agreement and announced that "the flea market would be proclaimed the territory of the socially vulnerable population" which will enable a more just distribution of counters and creation of conditions for a larger number of citizens to provide some kind of subsistence for themselves working at the "flea market".

Olivera S. Tomic

(AIM)