Serbian labor minister on visit to Czech Republic

PRAGUE - Serbian Minister of Labor, Veteran and Social Affairs Aleksandar Vulin talked with his Czech counterpart Michaela Marksova in Prague on Friday about mandatory community work for benefit claimants.

Vulin told Tanjug that this solution yielded very good results in the Czech Republic, which implemented it before Serbia, especially in relation to the minority groups or long-term unemployed.

"We should learn from those who did that before us and see how we can motivate people to work to earn their daily bread and change their life for the better," Vulin said.

Marksova and Vulin reached the agreement that the two ministries should work together on projects with which they will apply for European funds.

Vulin pointed to the need for concluding an agreement on military memorials, taking into account that there are around ten Serb military cemeteries from the First and Second World Wars in the territory of the Czech Republic.

"Serbia looks after its cultural and historical heritage and we want the memorials in the territory of the Czech Republic to become the concern of our ministry and our state," Vulin said.

In the Czech city of Terezin, the Serbian minister laid a wreath at the memorial plaque to Gavrilo Princip on the wall of the prison cell in which Princip spent the last four years of his life.

After the assassination of Austro-Hungarian crown prince Franz Ferdinand, Princip was sentenced to 20 years in prison and together with five accomplices sent to the prison in Terezin in 1914.

Princip died in the prison hospital in Terezin in 1918, just several months before the end of the Great War.

Photo Tanjug, R.Prelic