Layoffs at the Croatian Radiotelevision (HRT) are being announced without any publicly disclosed plan or program, and talk focuses only on the number—800 layoffs—which represents further destruction rather than the rescue of the public media service, warned MP Urša Raukar-Gamulin of the Green-Left political platform Možemo! on Wednesday, ahead of the parliamentary debate on HRT’s 2023 Annual Report.
“In recent days, we’ve heard about a so-called restructuring or consolidation of HRT. The only thing we actually know is that 800 people are supposed to go. That is unacceptable,” said Raukar-Gamulin at a press conference.
She pointed out that no plan with concrete financial and programming analyses, content strategies, or goals has been presented to the Workers’ Council, the Programming Council, the Supervisory Board, or the unions.
Speaking about the restructuring process that’s been hinted at since the beginning of January, Raukar-Gamulin noted that severance packages have been offered—initially to employees over 60, then to those over 50.
“We know that a decision was made in early January, with a deadline of March 31. But we haven’t seen any publicly released plan or basis for such a wide-scale restructuring. It is also unclear how the government has already secured a sum—recently mentioned to be 28 million euros—for severance payments,” she said.
Možemo! warns that HRT is in serious jeopardy if such unplanned and arbitrary actions continue, devoid of professional standards, quality criteria, program needs, or a clear vision to protect the role of public service broadcasting.
“For years we’ve been witnessing a decline in in-house content production, so it’s fair to ask whether the actual plan is for HRT to become merely an agency for outsourcing all content production. If that happens, the public broadcaster will cease to be what it’s fundamentally meant to be—which is a direct blow to democracy, culture, and the public interest,” Raukar-Gamulin emphasized.
The MP announced that she will request a thematic session of the Parliamentary Committee on Information, Informatization and Media to address the issue.