SPLIT LEASEHOLDERS IN DE-NATIONALISED FLATS AGAINST AMENDMENTS TO LAW ON APARTMENT LEASE

SPLIT, Jan 31 (Hina) - The leaseholders' association in Split has expressed its dissatisfaction with amendments to the Law on Apartment Leasing. On Sunday, the association requested that the amendments should not be passed by Croatian Parliament which had discussed them last Friday. The proposed amendments primarily refer to protected leaseholders on welfare, and the issue of janitors' apartments. This association defends interests of such protected leaseholders that are tenants who during the Communist regime were granted tenancy rights to privately owned apartments, of which some had been confiscated. The tenants in those de-nationalised apartments have not been granted the right to buy flats like the rest of citizens with the same tenancy right. Instead, they have received the status of the protected lease-holders. Our constitutional right to the equality, the inviolability of home, family and peaceful life has been thereby infringed, the president of the association, Marija Rozman said at a news conference in Split. She warned that the proposed amendments under which lessors will be obliged no longer to provide another accommodation for the current leaseholder in case they want to move in their own flat, would aggravate the position of leaseholders in privately-owned apartments. The Split association which protects interests of about 1,000 families asked for legal possibilities of buying the apartments in which they live or other adequate flats so that leaseholders in de- nationalised apartments can have the same status as citizens who were enabled to buy former socially-owned apartments. (hina) ms