Only in proceedings where the state is represented by the protector of property and legal interests, as much as 15 million euros were poured from the state coffers last year, and a similar trend has continued this year.
"Quarterly for last year it was somewhere below four million quarterly, while for the same period this year the amount is significantly lower, I can't say that it is a much higher amount, but we managed to lower it compared to last year," said the protector property - legal interests of Montenegro Bojana Ćirović.
The negative practice continued, and year after year the state pays out millions based on lawsuits filed by employees in the state administration due to the violation of labor rights.
"The Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Internal Affairs are still ahead of us here, there is also the number of employees, but it is about claims due to labor disputes and based on work where people claim what is due to them by law, unpaid wages, overtime and night hours of work. ..", points out Ćirović.
Some managers of state bodies have figured out how to be "good" hosts, so they don't pay employees what they are owed by law, but wait for employees to initiate court cases and get paid, but from the state budget.
Until now, the state has not initiated recourse policy procedures, that is, to compensate the damage it paid for from the minister, director, prosecutor or official who caused it through negligent work. That is changing now, announces Ćirović.
"It is clear that there are omissions, that the omissions continue and that they amount to several million. In the Law on Obligations, you have the option to collect retroactively, which the state has not initiated until today, the protector has initiated several procedures, we will see what happens with that because we need the support of the authorities to support the regressive policy because the state will only continue to pay for other people's mistakes," she states.
The personal data of over three thousand people were published on the Internet by the decision of the former NKT of Vlado Duško Marković, headed by Milutin Simović. Court practice established that 300 euros per person is awarded, which is a total of around 900 thousand euros. The government concluded that the Protector concludes settlements with citizens in order to avoid court costs at least. However, Ćirović announces that the state could also charge those who made this decision.
"And in that process, we initiated the government to give us some instructions in order to get the documentation, how the NKT body worked, to see if we can regress even from them...", she explains.
We already have the first legally binding judgments that the decisions on the dismissal of school and kindergarten directors, who were dismissed by the former Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sports, Vesna Bratić, are illegal. The state will first have to pay the costs of the procedure in those cases, and then the procedures for compensation in the form of lost wages will follow.
"There are about 140 such lawsuits, if you multiply everything by a minimum of 400 euros for litigation costs in each procedure, then you have 50 to compensate for just the litigation costs. We are working on the Government's conclusions to voluntarily pay those compensations due for damages to the directors," says Ćirović.
The public is not informed about the work of the Protector of Property and Legal Interests, which is limited by the number of employees and spatial capacities. Ćirović concludes that, while the public is most interested in how much money was spent, we should not forget that their work prevented other millions of claims from being drained from the state budget.
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