Twenty-five employees of the seven dormitories of the University of Prishtina (UP) are not being paid retirement contributions owed to them by cleaning companies.
Employee Remzije Xhumshiti says that she is preparing the necessary documents to sue the three contracted companies by UP, which haven`t paid the retirement contributions: “Omi Impex,” “Higjiena” and “Beni.”
“I would more willingly I would rather be paid one salary less, than having my contributions unpaid,” she expresses, imagining the eventual consequences when retirement time comes.
She works from 7:00 in the morning until 14:00, and adds that when necessary she works even longer than her scheduled time, in order to keep the dormitories clean.
“I take care of my family and it is difficult to do it with a 230-Euro salary. My husband and my son do not work, whereas my mother-in-law and I both have problems with blood pressure… It is hard to handle this situation,” Xhumshiti says.
Her colleague, Ibadete Mahmuti, says that according to a calculation, it seems that since 2011, 55,000 Euro has not been paid for the retirement contributions of the cleaning employees in the dormitories.
Currently, Mahmuti takes care of her 80-year-old mother-in-law, her husband who is a war veteran, and as well as pays for the education and well-being of her two children.
“In addition, I travel 38 kilometers from Podujeva to Prishtina every day, and one can hardly see how we can make it with a 230-Euro salary,” she says.
The current company “Beni,” contracted since April 2017, has not paid employees for three summer months.
Arben Kuçi, the leader of the Cleaning Company “Beni,” which currently has a contract with KosovaLive`s two interviewees, says that at the end the employees will be paid for everything.
“If we cannot afford to pay the contributions within the given timeframe in the contract, we report it to the Tax Administration of Kosovo and as soon as we get the money, we pay the retirement contributions of the employees,” Kuçi says.
He admitted that the fines for the companies in these cases are small.
Azem Ejupi, a lawyer from Prishtina, says that the Labor Law states that the person who does not pay retirement contributions can be fined from 100 to 10,000 Euros.
However, the cleaning employees in students` dormitories were not paid their retirement contributions when they contracted with the two cleaning companies “Omi Impex” and “Higjiena.”
This is proven by the documents in the possession by those affected. KosovaLive found out that the company “Omi Impex” did not pay contributions for 16 months within a three-year contract.
Islam Sallahu, the director of this company, said to KosovaLive that his company is no longer responsible for the hygiene of the dormitories, so he has no reason to talk about this issue.
Fatmir Sfishta, the director of the Students` Center, also says that they had problems with the “Omi Impex” company since the company did not pay the retirement contributions for the employees, but he added that this company paid all the obligations for all the employees prior to finishing the three-year contract. However, the documents that KosovaLive was provided with speak differently – the obligations have not been fulfilled.
The employees in the students` dormitories had problems with the “Higjiena” company as well. For a three-year period, they were paid the contributions only for three months.
“The condition of the private sector employees is alarming and slavish,” Jusuf Azemi, the head of the Independent Syndicate of the Private Sector in Kosovo, says.
Within this context, he mentioned 20 cases where people died in the workplace, out of which only four were considered natural death.
“Out of more than 300,000 of the employees in the private sector, around 50% do not have work contracts; 24% out of them are women and girls, so around 50,000 employees,” Azemi said.
He says that 50 million Euro get lost every year due to not paying retirement contributions. From 50% of employees with a work contract, 20% of them are not paid retirement contributions.
He added that he had meetings with the officials of the Government of Kosovo to address the problem of the mistreatment of the private sector employees, but he did not receive any positive answer yet.
According to the Kosovo Law on Pension Saving Trust, the obligations of the employer start on the first day the employee starts working and finishes when the employee reaches the retirement age.
Anita Musliu
