Commissioner for Information of Public Importance Rodoljub Sabic said that in connection with the actions the Serbian Government was taking or announcing for putting in order the field of salaries and compensations for managements of public enterprises, we should bear in mind the need to achieve a much higher level of transparency in the work of these and other subjects. The Commissioner said that salaries of management were a legitimate concern of the public, but they were not the only and the most interesting concerns and there was much information which should be controlled by the public for many reasons.

In connection with this, Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic also said the following:

“The Government took actions only after information on salaries and compensations of public enterprise managements became public through the Administrative Committee of the National Assembly and attracted attention. And I must remind that the Administrative Committee itself had serious problems when it tried to access this information; it even had to file a complaint to the Commissioner for Information for that purpose and it received most of the information only after his intervention.

Such situation is absurd in itself, all the more so because this is a kind of information which should be available to the general public without anyone filing a specific request. Thus, not only information on salaries and compensation for management, but as much information as possible on financial and material resources and their management, on public procurements, costs of presentations, donations etc. should be regularly published and updated in directories of these subjects, including their Internet presentations.

In connection with this I must remind that publishing of directories is a duty set by the law for all state enterprises with public powers. Unfortunately, only 7 of about 40 enterprises which have this duty on the Republic and provincial levels have directories on the Internet at this moment and they are as a rule scanty, not updated and without the abovementioned information. Failure to publish directories is an infringement under the law and I think that this degree of indiscipline in executing this legal duty shows it is high time the Serbian Government, i.e. its competent ministries, activated their duty of performing the function of monitoring the implementation of law and instituted within it infringement proceedings for non-execution of this legal duty.

It would be an illusion to believe that the much-needed and announced results in the fight against corruption may be achieved without a considerably higher level of public control over public financial and material resources management. It is very logical that this should start in public enterprises, but it must not end there. In general, all public authorities must make much more effort in order to improve transparency of their operations and make information about it available to the public to the highest extent possible.”