Municipality of Prijedor

The Municipality of Prijedor is one of the two pilot municipalities of the Urban Integration of Informal Settlements project. The municipality is located In Republic of Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

NALAS visited Prijedor on 19 and 20 February 2008. The meeting was held with Mr Marko Pavic, Mayor of Prijedor, Ms Mirjana Komljenovic, chief of department of spatial planning, Vera Jovic, contact person for NALAS activities, Radovan Vukadinovic, chief of the utilities department and Stanko Markovic, person in charge of the utilities. A site visit was of the area was also organized ( photos).

Prijedor is the second largest city in the Republic of Srpska. It has 105 000 inhabitants. Over 50 per cent of the citizens have moved during the past and currently there are 25 000 returnees. 17 000 are displaced persons from elsewhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina and 2 000 are refugees from Croatia. There are over 2 000 housing units providing shelter for the displaced people in Prijedor. Most housing units of the returnees have been rebuilt, but the houses of the displaced people have not been completed. Most of these duties fall to the Municipality.

There are informal settlements present in Prijedor for decades. However, their numbers escalated during and after the war. They now consist mainly of refugees. Their development was controlled during the whole time – as the crisis escalated, the municipality provided land divided into parcels and distributed it to refugees. Unfortunately, this is the lowest type of planning – no land assessment was done and no basic infrastructure was built. Parcels take up 300 m2 to 400 m2 on average, which proved to be too small. Constructions on these parcels are usually free-standing family houses and take up at least 30 per cent of the parcels. There is no social infrastructure.

Serious obstacle for legalization of the informal settlements is the ownership of the land, as many of the parcels are found on a land owned by a legal entity which is taking legal action against the municipality. Current infrastructure in the informal settlements in Prijedor is arbitrary, without proper planning. Most houses have not been completed and are built in stages.

The Law on spatial planning enabled Prijedor to issue two decisions for legalization of informal settlements. Each decision provided incentives for legalization of both informal and illegal construction. The total time for legalization was approximately 2 years for the both decisions, but only 396 applications were received. Many constructions were not legalized because they were in conflict with the urban plan and/or had some insufficiencies. The survey showed that those houses are conflicting with other land uses as security corridors for high tension lines, etc. Those constructions were given for the time being only “permissions to stay”.

Generally there is a problem with citizen participation. The Urban Planning department tries to go beyond the law requirements in order to engage more citizens in the planning process. However, most of the affected citizens do not have a habit to participate and their financial situation is so dramatic they cannot focus on other problems. There are no asphalt roads, no water and no sewage. One of the settlements has problems with floods and underground water. Most inhabitants do not receive any income and are very interested to legalize in order to begin small businesses and open shops.

There is an ongoing project for arranging and securing the banks of the small river “Miloshevica” and providing surface drainage for the affected areas. This is needed because the structure of the land holds water. A group of experts are about to assess the situation and propose appropriate solutions.

There is a new law being proposed that will address the informal settlements in the Republic of Srpska. While the law is very needed, there are possible problems with some parts – especially as it allows only 6 month period for accepting applications for legalization. Prolongation(s) of this period will certainly be needed in Prijedor.