Desolate halls, broken windows and doors, uprooted electrical installations, scattered inventory and garbage everywhere - this is today's picture of the Optel factory, once one of the most successful companies in Pljevlja.
The eerily empty halls of the company, which was bought in 2008 by businessman Dragan Brković from Podgorica for 2,1 million euros, today bear witness to another unsuccessful privatization in Montenegro. Instead of the announced investments of 3,3 million and the employment of about eighty workers, the former military factory 1 December is now a ruin, in whose halls there is not a single machine.
It is not known what the owner of the company did with them.
Since last year, the factory has not even had security, so everything that was valuable was taken from it. The windows of the administrative building, where the city library was located until last year, were also broken.
A bronze bust of Rafael Batini was also taken away, which the people of Pljevlja erected in the yard of the factory in memory of that one of hundreds of partisan fighters, sympathizers and collaborators who were shot by the Italian fascists from July 1941 to November 20, 1944 in the bay between two hills. in the town of Senjak.
Brković bought the property of "Optel" in bankruptcy in 2008 for 2,1 million euros, promising a bright future for the company and its employees.
Milojica Tešović, the former manager of the Economic and Financial Sector of the 1st December factory, where he worked for 12 years, says that the state property was bought with the aim not to organize production, but to resell the property.
"Companies were bought with money of dubious origin. There is also voucher privatization, which did not produce the expected results. People of dubious professional and moral qualities came to own a large number of companies who did not know what to do with them. The same fate befell the factory on December 1. The equipment has been sold off, and the facilities have been devastated so that everything remains in ruins," Tešović told "Vijesti".
The Golden Eighties
Military factory "1. decembar", and later "Optel", was one of the more successful collectives from Pljevlja. The salaries of the employees were the highest in the municipality, and in a very short time the workers received an apartment or a loan to build a house. The factory was founded in 1981, and the investor was the then Federal Secretariat for National Defense.
It produced devices from the field of electronics, intended for military needs, which in terms of technical solutions and quality were in the category of technology that characterized the most developed and modern manufacturers of this type in the world.
Although without a tradition in that sphere of production, by training its own staff, the factory already in 1985 offered the first series of devices for the needs of the then JNA.
The factory has its own swimming pool with drinking water, transformer station and boiler room.
"The factory had a well-rounded production process and had the most modern production equipment at that time. It was a dedicated production factory. The dedicated production program related to the production of electronic devices for the needs of the Army, primarily radars and radar detectors. Also, military equipment was overhauled in the factory. The factory also worked on some civilian programs, but on a much smaller scale," Tešović said.
He points out that 190 workers worked in the factory, of which 35 were engineers.
"Working conditions were extremely good. It was a complete technological production process with a very high level of occupational safety. Salaries were excellent, I think the highest in Pljevlja at that time. They were bigger than in the Coal Mine. Considering the working conditions and wages, people preferred to be employed in the military factory. At that time, about thirty mostly staff apartments were built. Engineers, primarily in the electrical profession, were given apartments even though they had not even a day of work experience, or only a few years. The engineers who were employed were scholarship holders of the factory, and in Zagreb there was a college financed by the Army where future personnel were trained. Practical training was carried out in factories of the electronic industry and factories of dedicated production. Also, staff with secondary education were trained, primarily electronics technicians. This kind of attitude towards the staff gave good results".
Collapse after the collapse of the SFRY
Tešović says that the factory failed because it was left without its main customer - the Army, after the breakup of Yugoslavia.
It took time and money to reorient to other production.
"On the other hand, electrical equipment was becoming obsolete and it was impossible to organize any serious production. An attempt was made to organize some production, but it remained an attempt. The factory was going bankrupt, staff were leaving, and losses were piling up, which is why bankruptcy was introduced, and the property was later sold to Brković".
He points out that this privatization should also be examined, given that valuable property is deteriorating and no one is taking care of it. And Pljevljak Rada Knežević with fond stories about the time spent working in a military factory.
He says that the working conditions were excellent, and the wages were good and regular.
"The factory was mostly staffed by young staff, a large number of whom were electronics, chemical and mechanical engineers. Regarding equipment and electronic instruments, what was then the most modern in the world - was in Pljevlja. Equipment and components that were embargoed for sale to countries behind the 'Iron Curtain' were sold to Yugoslavia at the time. The company operated successfully because all production was sold in advance, some for the needs of the JNA, some for export. With the breakup of Yugoslavia, the company was trapped in a state that had no interest in any kind of industrial production and that based its entire existence solely on tourism."
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