Citizens of North Mitrovica without dinar for a year: We are struggling and it is difficult

Residents of Kosovo who receive salaries, pensions, and other benefits from the Serbian budget have been facing difficulties for a year due to the decision of the Central Bank of Kosovo, which established the euro as the only permitted currency for cash transactions, effectively banning the dinar. Citizens of North Mitrovica say that over the past year, the hardest part has been traveling every month to a city in central Serbia to withdraw their payments.

The people we spoke with emphasized that, in addition to the dinar ban, which has been in effect for a year, their lives are also negatively affected by shortages of Serbian goods, especially medicines.

"Everything is missing, everything! First, you can’t even go out normally to withdraw money, and I’m a pensioner. We can’t get our medicines, I have to go to Raska or have someone bring them to me," an elderly woman said.

Another resident pointed out that, besides the travel difficulties, pensioners also struggle because checks cannot be used in Kosovo.

"We lack everything, everything. First, medicines, you have to go to Raska or Kraljevo to buy them. There are no groceries. I have checks, but no money, and my pension is 15,000 dinars, but no one here accepts checks. What kind of life is that? It is no life at all! Everything is shut down, and the worst part is that the post offices are closed. I went to Kraljevo five times, once to Novi Pazar, and three times to Raska, and still couldn’t finish the business I needed at the postal bank despite traveling so many times. It’s hard, what can we do? Still, this is our home, we are used to it, so we endure and struggle, but it is difficult, very difficult," she said.

Another resident shared that after 44 years of working, she now has to struggle with traveling just to collect her well-earned pension.

"How do we feel? It is hard. I have to go to Raska for my pension, but it is what it is. That is how society and the system have set things up. Might makes right, and we have to adapt. The hardest part for me is that I have to travel to Raska to collect the money I earned after working for 44 years, just so I can live a normal life. That is the hardest part," she concluded.