In November and December, the Sarajevo Canton Government will subsidise heating costs for 43,000 citizens from the most vulnerable groups of the population.
More than 39,000 citizens who receive the minimum pension, 2,500 social assistance beneficiaries and 1,500 veterans will receive subsidies.
The Prime Minister of Sarajevo Canton, Edin Forto, pointed out that the mentioned categories will receive help in order to overcome the winter and be able to pay for heating.
He said that the CS Government, in coordination with the Directorate for Commodity Reserves, has obtained significant quantities of heating oil and fuel oil in the event of a gas supply interruption.
A particularly important message is that hospitals, health institutions, schools, and social welfare institutions have no reason to worry in the coming winter because they will be provided with heating in every possible scenario, Forto emphasized.
He pointed out that the Government will adopt other measures during the heating season if necessary, and that it will be in permanent session.
The Minister of Labor, Social Policy, Displaced Persons and Refugees of the Canton Sarajevo, Ivana Prvulovi, clarified that in the Canton Sarajevo the Decree on subsidizing heating costs is in force, which refers to the most vulnerable groups of the population.
The Ministry is preparing instructions, and this category of the population will receive subsidies of 100 BAM each for November and December. These funds were provided by the Ministry. The government agreed today that the subsidy will include pensioners who get the lowest pension, about 39,000 of them, and then recipients allowances for assistance and care from another person, namely persons over the age of 65. We thought that persons of the third age are most vulnerable and decided to support them at this time. Prvulovi CS Minister of Veteran Affairs Omer Osmanovi reminded that the ministry will also provide additional funds for social protection institutions, but this year the law was changed and subsidies for all types of heating were provided, for which 600,000 BAM was provided.
In the past few years, there were only about 500 users of subsidies, and this year there will be about 1,500 members of the veteran population. One of the conditions of the invitation is that those who did not receive the so-called one-time assistance for social needs receive the subsidy This year, we have already distributed 4,200 one-time grants, and we will continue to distribute them until the end of the year. In the whole of last year, we had 3,600, according to Osmanovi, who said the public call was announced a few days ago, on September 19 and last two weeks.
The Minister for Communal Economy, Infrastructure, Spatial Planning, Construction and Environmental Protection of CS Enver Hadiahmetovi stated that the Ministry has started planning activities related to the supply of heating to the citizens of CS Enver this season.
We used all of our capacities for the companies Toplane and Bags-Energotehnika to replenish their capacities, and they stockpiled certain quantities of alternative energy sources, primarily fuel oil and fuel oil. It is important that at this moment we have sufficient quantities of fuel oil and fuel oil for eventual disappearance, i.e. Minister Hadiahmetovi said that the Ministry he heads has decided to grant subsidies for pellets for those who previously received a subsidy for replacement solid fuel stoves, of which 360 are currently, and that they are able to work in this way for about one and a half months.