June 18, 2010

18. June 2010.

William Infante Visited Bujanovac

During his visit to South Serbia, William Infante, UN Resident Coordinator in Serbia, talked with Saip Kamberi, President of the Municipality of Bujanovac, about the cooperation of the UN and local self - governments regarding the assistance with the remaining 4,823 internally displaced persons and refugees that live in the territory of the municipality of Bujanovac.

Out of around 200,000 refugees and internally displaced persons in Serbia, approximately 10 per cent of them live in the Jablanica and Pcinj districts. Most of them are in Vranje, Leskovac and Bujanovac.

William Infante’s visit had to do with a new joint UN program in South Serbia entitled “Peace-Building and Inclusive Local Development”. One of the goals of the program is to ensure good living conditions for internally displaced persons and refugees. The program envisages three forms of assistance to those who wish to leave collective centers, more precisely a one-off pecuniary assistance, building material for completing the already initiated building of houses and assistance with purchasing households in rural areas, as well as free legal assistance with the above-mentioned forms of assistance. 800,000 US dollars were earmarked for taking these activities, while the funds were provided from the Kingdom of Spain’s Fund for Achieving Millennium Development Goals.

Local action plans for providing assistance to internally displaced persons and refugees in collective centers have already been made in Bojnik, Medvedja, Vlasotince, Vladicin Han, Vranje and Leskovac. Some of those plans include the construction of apartments for social housing, whereas other plans refer to providing assistance with finding long-term private accommodation.” I’m glad that Bujanovac is on the path of adopting a local action plan”, said the high-ranking UN representative in Serbia.

During his talk with Mr. Infante, Mr. Kamberi pointed out that there were plenty of problems in Bujanovac, but that he believed that some headway had been made when it comes to giving support to internally displaced persons and refugees. “It’s difficult to be the president of a municipality in which the unemployment rate is over 70 per cent, where there are a lot of internally displaced persons and refugees that need jobs and regular housing. However, I believe that we’ll adopt a plan for resolving their problems and I’m pleased that we receive UN support through this program”, said Mr. Kamberi.