Azem: Government formation delay is damaging private sector workers

Independent Private Sector Union Chairman Yusuf Azemi has criticised the government's delay in forming, stressing that this is worsening the situation for private sector workers.

In an interview, Azem stated that even when institutions were in operation, there have been major problems for workers, while the current vacuum is burdening the situation further.

Even when we had the institutions in legal and legitimate order, we had such big problems and problems that I didn't realize, because they weren't at the right level. Especially now this vacuum that we hope doesn't turn out the way I'm thinking, will be a very long vacuum, this only makes the position of Kosovo private sector workers more difficult. If the government and parliament are willing to start dealing with the problems we have, we are too late. Let's not say that it could happen that in weeks and months we couldn't convert our body”, Azemi told Online Economics.

He has demanded that private sector workers, especially those offering services to state institutions, be treated equally with those in the public sector.

“automatically and directly hurt Kosovo private sector workers, because we have extremely big problems, we have the primary problem that we have said so far. The demand of private sector workers, especially where they perform services for state institutions, should equal public sector workers. We have workers at QKUKU, technical and physical security workers, where for the same position workers paid directly from Kosovo's budget, get 50 euros more that will rise in June 50 euros, while if we perform the service in the same country, only through the private company gets 100 euros less, and our demand is that we have to equal”, he added.

Azem has also warned protests and strikes if workers' demands are not realised.

If we start from the past every request we've made, but we know that we've made it with demands and strikes that we never praise with them because our institutions have done or approved our demands only when they've had the work from keeping going. Every minute for Kosovo private sector workers, no constitutionalisation of the Assembly and the government is a huge damage. We do not know who will come to the government, but there will certainly be protests and strikes in the face of how ready they are to realise our legal and legitimate demands”, he said.

Otherwise, the vote count for parliamentary elections held on February 9th is still continuing. Candidate votes for MPs are counted at about 80 per cent of the seats.