Vučinić: Cavusoglu wisely bypassed Tosčelik, the government helped the "economic giant" from the east from the budget

The president of the Workers' Party, Maksim Vučinić, points out that for a long time the public has not known anything about the events in Nikšić's Željezara, as well as that the recent visit of Turkish government minister Çavušoglu was indicative - "he wisely bypassed Tosčelik and for the first time there was no pomp and visit by the ruling sets Željezari, there were no eulogies, talk of new jobs and promised thousands of tons of steel".

"As the main trump card for the development of Montenegrin-Turkish cooperation, the authorities have identified Nikšić's Željezara. In the sea of ​​questions that plague Tosčelik workers, I would single out the question of ownership. It is no secret that the company Tosčelik, which has one euro of founding capital, does not actually own Nikšić Ironworks. The real owner is Tosjali Holding. Why should a factory of national importance be managed by a company that is not actually its owner? This fact alone already leads to doubts about the regular operations of companies involved in the story of the former economic giant of Montenegro and Yugoslavia," states the press release signed by Vučinić.

According to him, when it comes to production, one gets the impression that the factory is slowly melting itself, bearing in mind that the production process of continuous casting was shut down and that the plant was cut and later melted down as raw material. The same treatment, Vučinić points out, also befell the drive of the wire hauling machine.

"In the absence of money to start production, the management often uses strange ways of acquiring raw materials, even by cutting and melting rails from the railway infrastructure of the factory. Does the same fate await the blooming rolling mill, the largest plant of the former Ironworks", asks the president of the Workers' Party.

He reminds that the new owner of Željezara is presented as a strategically important partner for whom the former giant from Nikšić is just an entrance ticket and the beginning of fruitful cooperation.

"In practice, that story turned out to be a false promise and a pre-election trick. Today, eight years later, it can be seen that all this story resembles past predatory privatizations. What's more, it surpassed them because previous administrations extracted profits with minimal costs, i.e. minimum wages for workers, while today's wages are at an absolute minimum, and the losses of unsuccessful operations are compensated by the destruction of the factory's property," says Vučinić.

As he claims, the public is less aware that Tosčelik's debt to the Municipality of Nikšić has reached millions, and he asks whether "according to the old recipe of respect for investors" the local administration of the town under Trebjes will also decide to forgive the debts to the strategic partner.

"It turned out that Toscelik is not at the level of a company that could manage Željezara, which is evidenced by the great ignorance of the casting process itself, where every third ingot was spilled due to deviations from the standard." That this state of affairs, in addition to ignorance, is responsible for a frivolous approach and carelessness is told by the statement of director Fuad Tosjali, when he said that Željezara cannot do business well enough because the iron mine is far away, not knowing that Željezara does not actually smelt ore iron already scrap metal. When all of the above is added to the analysis of the operations of the Government of Montenegro and Turkish companies, from which it can be seen that the Government of Montenegro, i.e. the taxpayers, gave approximately 2011 million for a new stove purchased from a Turkish company in 2012 and 32, and at the end of 2012, the same "She sold the ironworks, whose bankruptcy estate was estimated to be worth twice as much as the furnace purchased, for a 'paltry' 15 million and one hundred thousand euros," the announcement reads.

The government, Vučinić points out, helped the economy of the "economic giant" from the East with the assets acquired by generations of Željezara workers and with money from the budget.

"Thus, she once again put us in a dilemma whether Wednesday is ignorance or corruption. In the 2012 elections and several times since then, for all pre-election campaigns, this privatization was presented as the best and as a reflection of the Government's concern for workers and Nikšić. "Would today this be called the complete collapse of the Ironworks, or does the government still believe that it has brought in a strategic investor who will revive the ironworks," concludes the president of the Workers' Party.