Taxi boat operators from Bar do not yet know where they will be able to dock and receive passengers this summer, because the problem that arose due to the fact that docks for such ships and boats were not provided for in the Coastal Zone Authority's tender for the lease of beaches has not yet been resolved.
From the Public Company for Coastal Zone Management, headed by Mladen Mikijelj, have not responded to "Vijesti"'s questions for 7 days about the docks for taxi boats, which members of the association of tourist boats for transporting passengers "Plavi Jadran" from Bar protested in February this year in front of the Coastal Zone Office in that city.
The owners of the taxi boats said at the time that such behavior, namely the failure to provide a dock for them, was unacceptable and threatened their existence, since no access for boats carrying passengers was planned in Bar.
At the time, they demanded that this problem be resolved in the "next ten or fifteen days," but four months later the situation is the same. The piers were not included in the tender, and sea passenger carriers failed to secure them and reach an agreement with the Coastal Zone.
As some of them told "Vijesti", they had a meeting in the meantime at that state-owned company where they were told that they could make internal agreements with the beach tenants and consider the idea of agreeing on the piers with them, in the form of a sublease.
They still don't know what to do, they said, since the only legal way to take on passengers is to accept them and return them to their berths in the Bar marina, which, they believe, is almost impossible since the marina is far from the beaches where they "purchased" the most passengers.
Because of all this, some of them stated, their work during this tourist season is uncertain and questionable.
"Most of us are still out at sea, preparing, only one of us is in the sea and ready to work. However, there are no guests, and there is no dock. In previous years, we would have been ready to start (working), but this year we don't know what will happen," one of the taxi boat owners from Bar told "Vijesti".
They are "still thinking" about the proposal that came from the Coastal Zone, to negotiate with beach tenants about the piers, but they are deterred by the issue of legality, the conditions, and the high prices that the tenants would impose.
In this way, they believe, they would expose themselves to risk because it would be almost impossible to oblige the tenants to have any obligations towards them, and subleasing would cost them dearly, provided that those who manage the beaches agree to it at all.
The Association of Tourist Boats for Passenger Transport "Plavi Jadran" has 19 members, the same number of sea passenger transporters in Bar.
At a protest in February, members of "Plavi Jadran" handed a letter to the officials of the Morki dobr in Bar stating that they are not mafia members since they are aware that the Minister of Urbanism and Spatial Planning Slaven Radunović said that the new tender for the Coastal Zone is a fight against the mafia.
"We are all registered, 19 of us, we operate legally and none of us are involved in crime, that's why we are still here today. If our request for docks is not met, we will be forced to block ships from entering the port," they said at the time.
They gave up on that, as they told "Vijesti", because they hoped that a peaceful and amicable solution would be reached, and they have to think about their existence since they live off work that lasts only "a month and a half", which is how long, according to their estimates, the tourist season lasts.
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