UNIONS STILL CRITICAL ABOUT DRAFT LAW ON PUBLIC ASSEMBLY

( Editorial: --> 0612 ) ZAGREB, Sept 15 (Hina) - Unions are still sharply critical about the final draft of a law on public assembly, despite positive assessments of the document by the Croatian Government and employers at a session of the Government's Economic and Social Council (GSV) on Tuesday. The GSV will no longer address problems concerning public assembly, so that the unions will have to forward their objections as amendments to be discussed by the Croatian National Parliament. Unions still object to the provision authorising local administrative bodies to prescribe where rallies can be held and under what conditions they can be banned or suspended. "We demand that public assemblies be allowed at all public places, except in the vicinity of hospitals and in national parks," Association of Public Service Unions secretary Kresimir Rozman said. The chief of the Interior Ministry's Public Affairs Department, Goran Bosiocic, stressed that the draft authorises local authorities to ban public assemblies at certain locations, but also that it obliges them to earmark places where rallies can be held without prior notice. The draft has been sent to the Council of Europe, which will forward its comments to the Ministry in the next few days, Bosiocic added. The session of the GSV reached an in-principle consensus about a temporary participation by the end of the year of union representatives at the managing boards of the labour exchange office, and the pension and health funds. Unions and employers are demanding changes in the composition of those bodies, so that the Government's dominance would give way to equal representation by all the parties. They have demanded that their representatives be included in the managing boards of the Croatian Privatisation Fund and Croatian Radio Television (HRT). (Hina) jn mro /mbr 152026 MET sep 98