Mostar: Infamous record of one construction

MOSTAR, Since 1985 until today, the Mostar sports hall is being eroded by minuses. And those temporal but even more so those who pile up in the city treasury under the item of its construction.

By: Berislav Jurič / Bljesak.info

If the plan of the Mostar city authorities is realized, due to the candidacy of the City for the European Capital of Culture 2024. year, the construction of the sports hall is completed, it will be an infamous record of one construction.

The cornerstone, laid on Valentine’s Day 1985. he has suffered all the sloppiness of this country for decades, and if the announced plan is realized, Mostar’s athletes will get a roof over their heads after a full 40 years.

Covering Sarajevo’s minuses

“We wish for the February ’87 festivities. we play the first game in our hall ”, recalls Filip Garmaz, the celebrated Mostar handball player, said Jola Musa, a high-ranking sports official at the time.

Garmaz says that then the money provided for the Mostar hall was withdrawn in order to “cover the minuses” after the Sarajevo Olympics.

From then until today, the Mostar sports hall has been eroded by minuses. And those temporal but even more so those who pile up in the city treasury under the item of its construction.

Since Mostar has not had a City Council for years and there are still no political changes in the elections in the city on the Neretva, no decision can be made on financing the continuation of the construction of the hall.

“The City Administration of the City of Mostar is conducting intensive activities to find ways to provide the necessary funds to continue the construction of the sports hall in Mostar,” said the Secretariat of the Mayor of Mostar.

Eight million KM

According to the data provided by the City of Mostar for the construction of the hall since 2010. to date, more than eight million KM have been spent.

The money that the government invested before the war in the hall that entered the war as a skeleton and came out of it, fitting its appearance into all the war scars, cannot be traced, and according to data from the city, 8,506,485.96 were spent on the hall. KM.

All these years, the money has been given to the company Hering, which is the contractor. In 2010. a total of 4,397,126.25 KM was spent.

The following year, almost twice less was spent – 2,618,046.43 KM of the check, 1,500 KM was spent on the audit of the project.

In 2012. the amount was drastically reduced, so it was built only in two phases at a price of 648,966.51 KM, while in 2014. year, only 400,293.47 KM was spent on the construction of the basement part of the center, and since then there have been no works on the center.

The only money that is subsequently tied to the sports hall is that it was paid to the Directorate for Construction, which was approved in 2015. 154,053.30 KM, while from 2015. until 2018 96,000 KM was paid to the Directorate in 2006, ie a total of 288,000 KM.

So, according to the document submitted to us by the Budget and Finance Service of the Finance and Real Estate Department of the City of Mostar, a total of 6,319,742.76 KM was spent on the construction of the sports hall, 1,898,743.20 KM was paid for rent and the rest is the business of the Directorate.

Another 25 million KM needed According to recent public appearances, Mostar Mayor Ljubo Beslic needs almost 25 million KM to continue the construction of the sports hall.

But, four years earlier, it was said that the construction of the sports hall costs 62 million KM, that so far the City of Mostar and the Federation of BiH have set aside about 12 million and that a loan of about 40 million KM is expected.

The amounts, after the revision, and the descent of the project, which has not yet grown from land to land, have been reduced. However, the problem is that the City of Mostar has no one to give that money for now because Mostar cannot guarantee the return of those funds.

The government of the Herzegovina-Neretva County is ready to be a guarantor of Mostar, but for now everything is just promises.

“We did not plan these funds in the budget for the construction of a sports hall, but we did, since the situation with the City Council in Mostar is known. The Government and the Assembly, we were told by the HNŽ Government.

They say that certain contacts have been made with the Council of Europe Development Bank.

There are no firm guarantees

“They offered a very favorable credit line for this purpose and the mayor and his services have already taken it upon themselves to take all necessary actions regarding credit borrowing until the stage when the decision on credit borrowing is made by the Assembly and the government,” the government said. HNŽ.

However, it is still unknown when Mostar, and then the Government, will decide on this step. It is only known, as it has been confirmed to us, that in a loan of around 25 million KM, “some other projects that were previously agreed upon” would be agreed upon.

Edin Prašo, director of the Directorate for the construction of the sports hall, says that for now there are no firm guarantees that this will happen and that everything is on the promises for now.

“There is no technical precondition for the continuation of construction. Financial preconditions in terms of credit do not exist due to the non-existence of the City Council. The city should make a decision on borrowing. But the City cannot make that decision because there is no Council ”, said Prašo, adding that “the bank was also angry”.

“They made monitoring, invested significant funds in the redesign of the project, made a huge effort to adjust to some of their standards. Are we capable, do we know what we want, can we repay the loan, do we know how to manage the allocated funds, do we know how to manage the facility we get and in the end they decided to give us the green light. However, we did not take a step on our own. We could have agreed with Enismo first, and when we agreed – there is this phase of co-indebtedness ”, said Prašo and added that there is no “paper” by which the Government commits to co-debt.

36 clubs are waiting for a roof over their heads

Thus, 36 Mostar clubs, which are exclusively related to the work in the hall of 100 in the city, will again be waiting for paperwork and high politics, which fell very low on this unresolved issue for decades.

The Sports Association of the City of Mostar says that most of the 87 clubs that are members of the Association during the year express the need for a hall, but they manage in various ways.

They train in school halls, rent appointments in private sports facilities or, if time allows, train outside.

“As far as we know, due to the lack of an adequate sports hall, Mostar was left without hosting the World Handball Championship for players under 21 organized by the BiH Handball Federation,” the Federation told us, adding that clubs work in difficult conditions, with limited training dates. .

However, Prašo, in addition to the sports need for the hall, points out that the city’s need for the hall is still significant because the hall has the cohesion factors that it had in the beginning.

“There are three important factors that make the hall necessary. The first is the integration of the people within the city because it is actually a district so it is the integration of the people of those who live here. Second, EU integration and then youth integration. These are three important factors that require work in Mostar. ”said Prašo.

However, politics has its fingers in everything, so for a long time in Mostar one could hear that the construction of the hall was conditioned by some other concessions since it is a central city zone which is one of the stumbling blocks when it comes to election rules for Mostar. rules of the game allegedly moved to the field.

Political obstacle

Prašo says that there used to be a political obstacle, but that there is no obstacle today.

“A couple of years ago, there was a political obstacle because in a way there were topics about how much is invested here and how much is invested there. As far as I understand now, there is no reason at all to consider the hall to be left or right. The hall is in the center of the city and it is the hall of all citizens and, in the end, those who pay ”said Prašo.

The city sports hall is also in Mostar ‘s plan to become the European Capital of Culture in 2024. year, so it was included in the project as the Streka Hall, due to which the City expects additional funds.

“We applied to the Federal Ministry of Culture as a project of cultural significance for the Federation. We consider ourselves users of the Federation’s capital investments “, Prašo told us, adding that in addition to sports events, programs from the mentioned candidacy would also be held there.

While the people of Mostar are recording exceptional successes on the world stage and becoming a unique type of sports ambassadors because they promote top sports and started from a city without a hall, the citizens of the city on the Neretva do not believe they will get a hall soon.

The pessimism of the Mostar ace

And Garmaz, who says he has been listening to promises about the sports hall since the 1970s, doubts that it could almost beautify Mostar.

“I have been in action around the Mostar Sports Hall since 1970. The first was the idea of covering Kantarevac. It was a project in my former club (RK Velež, op. Cit.), And in 1984. year, the project was made by Soko Engineering. Maybe we need a smaller hall. I don’t believe that the hall will be almost finished in that place. “, this Mostar handball ace did not hide his pessimism.

The fact that they enthusiastically accepted the April Fool’s joke of the Bljesak.info portal, which states that a large park will be built instead of a sports hall above the underground garages, and that the proposal was made by a German company because the construction of the hall on the old the place no longer makes sense.