The former director general of the Public Service, Branko Vojicic, said that he was fired from that media house illegally, probably due to the fear of members of the RTCG Council that, if they did not remove him, they might lose their jobs themselves.
He sued that media house, requesting the annulment of the decision on his dismissal from the position of general director of RTCG, stating that it is unfounded and illegal and that it does not contain grounds for dismissal and resignation, as well as an explanation.
Therefore, he demands that the court oblige the television station to return him to work within 15 days of the verdict becoming final.
Vojičić, in his testimony in the Basic Court in Podgorica, said that the decision to dismiss him from the position of general director of RTCG was lump-sum and staged and that it was not proven that he damaged the Public Service through negligent work.
He explained that the Council, according to the Law on Public Broadcasting Services, was obliged to publish the financial report for the previous year on the website by the end of June, and that the members of that body could be dismissed if they did not do so.
Vojičić's employment contract provides for a severance payment in the amount of six to twelve of his monthly gross earnings, which is around EUR 12, and he will ask for it if he loses this dispute
"They published the unadopted report on the website. As the Tax Administration and SAI were in control, its adoption was postponed until the fall, in order to complete the documentation," said Vojičić.
He added that he warned the Council that something that was not adopted and voted on cannot be published, and at the beginning of July he requested an opinion from the competent parliamentary committee.
"That's where revenge began. The goal was for me to remove myself. Two days later, the publication and secret conversation between Council President Duško Simonović and members of the new union in which he calls me a fool. I didn't do anything illegal, what they refer to is not my failings. They are referring to the SAI report that was issued two months after my dismissal," said Vojicic.
He noted that he did not ask for the dismissal of Council members, but only for the board's opinion regarding their actions.
"I expected at least an apology from Simonović for his comments," said Vojicić.
Public Service Representative Zoran Mijović questioned Vojičić about the objections to the work of the former general director that were presented by the auditors in their report, while Vojičić claimed that these were not his failures at all, that the Council constantly interfered with his powers and that they wanted to have control over to all.
Vojičić's attorney, lawyer Goran Rodić, pointed out that in the decision on the dismissal of Vojičić, there are no questions or objections from Mijović about the number of employees in 2010, contracts with UEF signed by Vojičić, contracts with management, payments of variables, costs of using mobile phones... and that these questions confirm that Vojicic was illegally dismissed.
"We are discussing a document that was submitted to the RTCG two months after the dismissal of Vojičić, so such a report could not be the reason for his dismissal," said Rodić.
Mijović, on the other hand, believes that the SAI report, regardless of the fact that it was written two months after Vojicić's dismissal, talks about the omissions that the former general director made in 2010 while he was in that position.
At the beginning of March, the public service lost the court case against Vojičić, in which the media house requested the annulment of his employment contract, i.e. the nullity of the provisions of the contract related to salary and severance pay. RTCG appealed against that ruling, and the case is now in the High Court.
Vojičić's employment contract stipulates a severance payment in the amount of six to twelve of his gross monthly earnings, which is around EUR 12, and he will ask for it if he loses this dispute.
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