Factories per kilo

The saying "slaughter an ox for a kilo of meat" in Montenegro has a more modern variation: "slaughter" a factory for a kilo (let it be a ton) of scrap iron. I hate to list the "killed" factories of our beloved homeland. Their structures, machines and equipment are first class steel scrap. A ton, and up to three hundred dollars. There is no shortage of customers. Our "strategic planners" cleverly thought that the latter should be cut out of the Željezara, and until then, that every last piece of iron should be burned in it, even the one extracted from the excavations in Dukljana. (It remains to be seen what Savo Bačić will do with Oboda).

The same manuscript that ordered "exterminate the goats to work in the factories", now ordered "exterminate the factories to keep the goats". Obedient Montenegrins! A shepherd could be found, but where are the goats? If we manage to get them, we could develop a factory to make candles from goat horns, in order to better illuminate our obviously bright future.

Primorka from Stari Bar also experienced the fate of the vast majority of Montenegrin factories, which, well, was burned by fire before it even reached the blast furnace. Our good old Primorka. Once upon a time, a real factory. Beauty! How many hungry people did she feed, house, do for people, give birth to love.

The noble Marići from Kolašin (M. Đilas, "Besudna zemlja") built their factory for processing olives (and some other things) on the same site before the Second World War. They haven't used it for too long. Nationalization, and the factory is no longer theirs. I know, it wasn't easy for them. As with anyone who has an idea (vision), he realizes it, and then they tear it down - kidnap him. To add to their pain, they lived nearby.

Nevertheless, the factory was developing. Initially based on raw materials from the immediate environment (olives, fruits, vegetables, medicinal plants - extraction), and later sunflower processing and oil production, to complete the product range with the production of juices, syrups, bread and pastries. Seven thousand tons of "amber" oil - annually, thousands of hectoliters of juices and syrups, "Coca-Cola" bottling plant, the only one to Belgrade. Other bread was bought only when Primorkin "passes". The bar had an official world champion - "pomegranate juice". Warehouses, cold storage, retail facilities. Carrier of development and agriculture (purchase of oranges, tangerines, tame and wild pomegranates). The factory for filling water from the Gulf before the start of implementation.

It was the official water at the UNKTAD summit in Belgrade in the 80s. One thousand two hundred employees, who knew their job. Collective!

Then thunder came out of the blue. With a new development philosophy, transition, transformations, knowing how, they decided to live better. And, we are where we are. With the sale of buildings, outside the "core" of the company, and soon the "core" itself, Primorka is no more. And there are almost no employees. A little bit of (still excellent) bread is baked, and we don't know until when. Or we know. Such a factory, such a company. Just as if it had been burning inside all these twenty years, the other day a huge column of black smoke shot up high into the sky. Primorka is burning! "It burned down a long time ago," someone said.

And, by God, it cost money. A lot of municipal money was invested there, as well as in the Princess and Sozina hotels, Izbor department store, Centrojadran, Bar bilje, PTT-central, Marina, Rumijatrans, Put and many others. Everything was sold for a pittance, and the municipality didn't get a cent. Why was it sold? What is written in those privatization contracts? Did the "customers" offer and expect exactly what happened to the once powerful bar companies. Preococeanska was destroyed even without privatization.

The shark and the Nobel laureate, who would fall out of the boat, are "measured" according to the weight of the "live scale". Our privatization sharks most often measure their transitional loot according to the square footage of buildings and land, less often according to the rent in the "as-seen condition", and the workers, no matter how expert in the industry where they spent their best years, are only a burden and a hindrance to turning physical quantities into money , as a rule, tens of times higher than the investment.

Does anyone else know how much the port of Bar cost. How much space was given to it and an entire city was destroyed for its expansion. How many millions of euros and thousands of square meters per employee? As it looks now, barely five hundred workers will come to work there. They won't be able to call each other in that vast space.

How many thousands less people are employed in the economic enterprises of Bar today than there were in 1989. What is the lost GDP. (At least half the highway). Where to employ a child without it being a shop or a cafe. What to live on? What is an observable perspective?

The current prime minister has an alibi. Because the Bar was built before he came of age, but it also became weak before he began to "cover" more important functions. He is looking for specific proposals, not just criticism of the existing situation. With right.

I must remind you that the Bar had people who were visionaries and who were willing to realize those visions. At least since 1960, when Ljubo Marković and Marko Orlandić came to Bar "on assignment", and only for a few years. Then the more intensive construction of the port began, Prekokeanska, Rumijatrans, and the unified trading company Izbor were founded. Even in the catastrophic earthquake of 1979 and later in the reconstruction, it "did the best" and in 1989 it had a powerful economy, without "losers", with a clear perspective. A municipality with almost no real unemployed. There was no "imported" intelligence. "People from outside" were coming. But as trainees, who gained their full professional and every other affirmation at the Bar. At least it was an open city. However, the main support was on "domestic forces". Today?

People are the starting point and assumption of everything good (and bad). In the last ten years alone, 9 annual scholarships were awarded to young people from Bar, students whose average grade is over 752, and there were over 400 beneficiaries. Where are these people? What are they doing?

I think that today the biggest and fastest development chance for the Bar is putting into operation, or better use, those capacities that were created until 1989. There are facilities with the necessary infrastructure, I hope some of the equipment, but, certainly, the equipment needs to be renewed and modernized. Unused, "numbed" capital is several hundred million euros. This would mean that the privatization contracts should be reviewed.

It would be best if the "buyers" would come up with the idea of ​​putting the companies they bought into full operation, but that is, for most, unlikely, when they haven't done it in the past ten years.

The process of further sale of port capacities should be stopped, and the port of Bar should be integrated into a single company with one management and a different organization. This as soon as possible, because the negative effects of the division of the port are large and multiple.

If we already have to endure the Law on Ports, bring the port administration back "home", to Bar, and organize it to do the work provided for by the Law.

All eyes of Montenegro are focused on "entering Europe". I agree that it is important, but we have more important things to do. Our economy, with or without the global economic crisis, cannot sustain this much consumption. The result is a very rapid increase in the national and total debt. That problem will not be solved by agendas or similar ad hoc documents. A "deeper" analysis and adequate measures are needed. Something like an economic reform. It will be painful, but healing. I guess that's why the Government exists, as well as universities and academies. If we don't know something, there is someone who does.

And something else. Perhaps young people will prefer parties in power if their membership is not a condition for employment and advancement of any kind.