Category: Victims of negligence
Period: from 22 Jul 2023
Outcome: Under investigation (as of 15 Aug 2023)
After storms in July 2023 in Bačka Palanka, a grandfather and his thirteen-year-old grandson were killed by live cables that nobody had removed, even though, according to RTS, the fault had been reported 27 times. When a journalist asked him how many such cables were still out there, the municipal president Branislav Šušnica shouted at her, and a worker who protested was fired. Electricity Distribution of Serbia suspended two dispatchers and filed a criminal complaint, on the basis of which one person was questioned; the outcome is not known, and Šušnica remained in office.
A sixty-six-year-old local man was killed on 22 July 2023 while trying to move a live cable brought down by the storm out of his yard. His grandson, a thirteen-year-old boy, was killed on 31 July in Dositejeva Street by a cable that was still hanging from a utility pole.
According to RTS, a neighbour had reported the fault to the electricity distributor as early as 19 July, and the case was reported another 27 times after that, but nobody removed the cables before the tragedy. On 4 August the family asked people to stop the protests and to stop mentioning them.
Elektrodistribucija Srbije said that, alongside its own network, the site also carries public lighting belonging to a local utility company. According to the news site BAP vesti, street lighting is the responsibility of the public enterprise “Standard”, whose employees are also members of the municipal Emergency Situations Headquarters.
The Ombudsman opened an inquiry. The municipality told him that the cable most likely belonged to the public lighting and that it had not received a single report from residents; the outcome of the inquiry has not been published.
On 2 August, BAP vesti journalist Dragana Jovičić Bujak asked Branislav Šušnica, the municipal president and commander of the Emergency Situations Headquarters, how many more unsecured live cables there were. He accused the outlet of seeking popularity from a child's death, shouted “You should be ashamed of yourselves” and said the question should be put to “Elektrovojvodina”.
The Journalists' Association of Serbia demanded that he apologise, and NUNS sent him a guide on how politicians should behave towards journalists.
Željko Pejčić, a worker at the utility company “Komunalprojekt”, was fired the day after he took part in the first protest; by his account, he was told he was dismissed because of the protest. When the media reported it, he was asked to come back, but he did not return. He says he had to be a member of the SNS to work at the company and that local officials threatened protesters' families with dismissal.
For days, residents protested in front of the municipal building, demanding the resignations of Šušnica and members of the emergency management headquarters. The deadline they set, 11 August, passed without a response, and they found not a single official in the municipal building. The day before, they had signed a criminal complaint for causing general danger, addressed to the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Novi Sad.
Šušnica spoke up only on 15 August, with a statement saying that all resources had been deployed on repairs. At a protest on 9 September, residents who had examined the minutes claimed that the headquarters had had a quorum only once in its first ten sessions.
A commission of Electricity Distribution of Serbia suspended two dispatchers at the Bačka Palanka branch, filed a criminal complaint against them and dismissed the branch manager. According to N1, one dispatcher has been questioned. He says he has been treated unjustly, because about ten workers could not keep up with repairing the damage across 800 kilometres of network, and his lawyer says the municipality's mayor has not been questioned.
The outcome of neither complaint is known. According to the BAP vesti portal, three years later residents have still not received an answer from the local authorities.