ZAGREB, May 5 (Hina) - Croatian First Deputy Prime Minister Goran Granic on Friday promised representatives of the union of mine-clearers that the Government would equalise the rights of the bomb squads with the rights of veterans and
invalids of the Croatian Homeland war. The deminers protested in front of the government building seeking equal rights Friday. Granic promised the government would within a month forward to the parliament's Legislature Committee a draft interpretation of the Mine-Clearance Law, for which the bomb experts claim is not being implemented properly. The widows and families of killed or invalid mine clearers have been trying to solve their status for three years now. Although humanitarian demining is treated around the world as a combat operation, and mine-clearing victims as victims of war, in Croatia it is heeded as mere injury at work, union president Antun Vincetic sai
ZAGREB, May 5 (Hina) - Croatian First Deputy Prime Minister Goran
Granic on Friday promised representatives of the union of mine-
clearers that the Government would equalise the rights of the bomb
squads with the rights of veterans and invalids of the Croatian
Homeland war.
The deminers protested in front of the government building seeking
equal rights Friday.
Granic promised the government would within a month forward to the
parliament's Legislature Committee a draft interpretation of the
Mine-Clearance Law, for which the bomb experts claim is not being
implemented properly.
The widows and families of killed or invalid mine clearers have been
trying to solve their status for three years now.
Although humanitarian demining is treated around the world as a
combat operation, and mine-clearing victims as victims of war, in
Croatia it is heeded as mere injury at work, union president Antun
Vincetic said.
The union is also requesting that a new Law on Mine-Clearance be
passed to clearly establish the status and rights of deminers as
that of Homeland War soldiers.
Unless their requests are fulfilled soon, the mine clearers will
organise a new, bigger protest on June 12, he stressed.
Out of 500 Croatian deminers, the union gathers 250 employees of
mine-clearing companies, while the rest work for the Armed Forces
and Interior Ministry.
(hina) lml jn