Bosnia and Herzegovina Radio and Television, BHRT, Bosnia's state television, is experiencing extreme financial hardship, which is making it difficult to support the functioning of the network and might result in it having to stop broadcasting, the network's administration said.
"Our situation is critical: we cannot even sustain our expenses for gas and electricity, not to mention the €5 million that we should pay the European Broadcasting Union," Belmin Karamehmedovic, the director of the television station, told BIRN on Tuesday.
"If we don't find a solution to our finances, there is a concrete risk that BHRT will disappear, which would make Bosnia and Herzegovina the only European country without its own state television," Karamehmedovic said.
The management of BHRT says the top problem is the constant fall in revenues from taxes, which should represent the first source of money for the station.
"It's a problem that has been going on for years. The income from the taxes is falling by almost €2 million a year," Karamehmedovic said.
Every owner of a TV in Bosnia set should pay around €3.8 in taxes to the public television, but only ab0ut half of Bosnians actually pay this sum, according to data published by Aljazeera Balkans.
Until now, the tax for the state television has been collected within the bills of the three main fixed line telephone operators.
However, as Bosnians increasingly rely only on mobile phones and scrap their landline telephone contracts, the flow of funds into BHRT gets smaller every year.
Last week, the management released a statement saying that the television station had already done everything it can to cut the costs.
"The costs for human resources have been reduced by a million KM [€500,000] in comparison to 2015 and we have already cut all possible expenses without damaging our daily work," the board stated, calling for a quick reform of the public television system that would grant it stable funding.
The company management has repeatedly asked for the contribution towards BHRT's budget to be shifted to people's electricity bills.
Despite its requests for a quick review of the law to find alternative funding for BHRT, the Bosnian government, the Council of Ministers, has yet to agree on a solution.
"Our government does not care at all about public service television," Damir Smital, president of the Union of the BHRT Workers, told BIRN on Tuesday.
"Salaries and wages are regularly paid for now", Smital assured, "but we need to find a solution that will allow the regular financing of the state television of Bosnia and Herzegovina," he said.
The union has called for a protest of BHRT workers, who are gathering on Wednesday to criticize both the management and the lack of response from the institutions.
According to the Ministry of Communications, however, a solution could be found in the next six months.
"The Council of Ministers will discuss a draft law on February 4 to extend the validity of the current system of financing until June 30, 2016. In the meantime, during the next five months, the government will agree on a new way to collect resources for the functioning of the state television," Igor Pejic, secretary of the ministry, told BIRN on Tuesday.
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