In November 2022, near the end of his four-year term in the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Šefik Džaferović from SDA [the Party of Democratic Action] having met the conditions for retirement received a severance pay of BAM 37,097.
It didn’t take him long to replace his “retirement days” with the position of a delegate in the House of Peoples of the BiH Parliamentary Assembly, so in February 2023, he was paid a salary, a hot meal allowance, and a flat-rate allowance of BAM 2,800. The regulations allow him to receive both, a pension and a salary.
Six-net-salary severance pay is paid to workers who reached 65 years of age and 20 years of service or just 40 years of service to facilitate their transition to retirement after decades of service.
Džaferović did not want to discuss this with reporters from the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIN).
His entire working career, he had been receiving salary from the budget, mostly in the Entity and state-level parliaments. Before the war, he served as a judge in Zenica and Zavidovići, and during the war and shortly after the war, he worked at the Security Services Center in Zenica and the Agency for Research and Documentation (AID).
He entered the Parliament of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a delegate in 1996 and then served four terms in the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Before starting his fifth term in the State Parliament, he served for four years as a member of the BiH Presidency. The high salaries paid to him throughout his working career enabled him to receive a record severance package. For the last 20 years, his monthly income was between BAM 2,600 and 6,500.
Around BAM 650,000 were paid in severance since 2010 to 22 officials of the Parliament, the Council of Ministers, and the BiH Presidency.
Most of them continued to work after receiving severance pay, including state MPs from the current convocation such as Nebojša Radmanović, Nikola Špirić, and Sredoje Nović from the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, and Bakir Izetbegović, president of SDA, and Dragan Čović, president of the Croat Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Elected and appointed officials, as well as other employees of state institutions, are entitled to severance packages based on the Law on Salaries and Remunerations in the Institutions of BiH and the Decision on the entitlement to severance pay upon retirement from institutions.
CIN previously wrote about BAM 17.5 million being paid from early 2010 to March 2021 to 1,973 employees in severance packages upon retirement.
Elected and appointed officials received the largest severance pay, thanks to average salaries of close to BAM 4,800.
Unlike officials in BiH institutions, employees in the entities are not entitled to such severance pay because there are no general collective agreements in the entities that would give them the right to severance pay upon retirement.
