The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection sent a letter to the Ministry of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure in which he suggested that the Ministry make efforts to make publicly available on a proactive basis any information it has on the developers, contractors and subcontractors, if any, working on the Corridor 11 highway, by posting and regularly updating such information on its official website.
The letter was sent following communications from a group of citizens and their legal representatives, who had notified the Commissioner they had contacted a number of government authorities and officials in connection with this issue.
Without questioning the importance of the works on the highway, the citizens and their legal representatives nevertheless noted that such works often caused damage to their property and, in the absence of the required information, they had no means of exercising their right to seek damage compensation by filing lawsuits.
They stated that, in their efforts to obtain the data they needed to file lawsuits, they faced a situation in which they received contradictory information; namely, the company named as the developer was sometimes Public Enterprise "Putevi Srbije", while at other times it was Public Enterprise "Koridori". They also noted they were unable to obtain information about the contractors, as their requests in that regard were met with met with answers about allegedly "confidential" contracts or were told the contractors were "foreign companies" that had hired "unknown" subcontractors. They also alleged their efforts to indirectly obtain the information they needed about the contractors failed, as the lorries and other heavy vehicles which had caused damage usually had no marks on them, while the drivers who operated them refused to say who employed them.
There is no legitimate, justified reason to hamper citizens' access to all available remedies for the purpose of exercising their right to receive compensation for any damage that may have been caused to their property. There is likewise no justified reason to make information on highway developers and contractors inaccessible to the public – indeed, quite the contrary – much less to cause unnecessary and unwanted dissatisfaction among citizens by implementing an otherwise beneficial project. Quite the opposite: the government has a duty to make the exercise of their rights easier and simpler and to address any grievances caused by the lack of necessary information.
