Montenegro: Allegations of labour rights abuses, inadequate compensation for land allocated for construction linked to Bar-Boljare motorway project
The billion-dollar motorway leading Montenegro to nowhere, 28 May 2021
... The motorway should link Bar harbour in the south to the border with Serbia in the north. The first section was scheduled to be finished in 2020, but it still isn't. We talked to Bojan. He and his family have lived in Montenegro for generations. Part of his property was expropriated for the motorway project, but he was not fully compensated.
Politicians promised lorry drivers, like him, that the motorway would create thousands of jobs, but Bojan got nothing. The Chinese contractor brought in its own workers. Bojan also knows of subcontractors hiring illegal workers from neighboring countries, workers with no contracts or social security contributions.
Bojan tells us that he would have preferred Montenegro to choose Europe for this loan instead of China. He believes that choosing Europe would have meant more checks would have been done "and the construction would be done by now"...