Unemployed workers from Tuzla staged a protest march to the border with Croatia last week, prompting the government of Tuzla Canton to issue a one-time payment of roughly 200 Euros to each protester. Despite the payment, the workers say they will continue their weekly protests within Tuzla in the new year.
“If they think they are done with us…they are not,” [protest leader Dzevad] Mehmedovic told Balkan Insight.
“We will wait until after the holidays and then protest again on a Wednesday as usual,” he said.
Mehmedovic was one of around 200 workers from four companies that went bust after privatisation in the Tuzla region who last week walked around 90 kilometres to the border with Croatia but returned on Sunday.
Workers from the companies have protested every Wednesday for around a year. During one of the protests in February, thousands of ordinary people joined them and the protest spread into nationwide demonstrations about bad economic conditions and corruption.
