Three Albanian workers engaged as officials for Communities and Returns in the Municipality of North Mitrovica have been dismissed, while they have described the decision as “political, discriminatory” and based on ethnic quotas, KosovaPress reports.

“This is political and discriminatory, my position was an official for Communities and Returns”, one of the officials declared to KosovaPress, who did not give his name and surname.

He said that they were accepted to the job through an open competition and that the procedures were regular.

“We were accepted through a regular procedure and an open competition… the competition was open to everyone, it did not mention anywhere whether you had to be Albanian, Serb or Bosniak to apply”, he said.

According to him, the decision to dismiss was justified by the non-respect of ethnic quotas.

“And this is the reason we were dismissed because we were more Albanian than other communities”, he said.

The official stated that the contracts were for an indefinite period, with a six-month probationary period, but that they were not evaluated as provided for by law.

He claimed that they did not receive prior written notice, while the decision was only delivered to them on the day of dismissal.

“No more, they did not notify us… we did not receive anything in writing… The notice of dismissal from work was confirmed on the day we had already left and we only received the decision”, he stated.

The decision issued by the mayor of the Municipality of North Mitrovica states that “the recruitment process for this office was non-transparent and in open contradiction with the legislation in force, since the aforementioned decision of the Municipal Assembly, which constitutes a binding legal act for municipal bodies, was not respected”.

Further, the same decision states that “in a city with a pronounced multiethnic composition, such an action constitutes a violation of the principle of equal representation of communities and a direct violation of the legal and sub-legal provisions that regulate the purpose, competencies and functioning of this office”.

The dismissal was also confirmed by the person with the initials R.U. for KosovaPress, who said that together with two colleagues they were dismissed on the 26th of this month, without notice.

“I was engaged and together with two colleagues who dismissed us from work as Community and Return Officers, in the municipality of North Mitrovica. We started in 2025, there was a 6-month probationary period without a specified deadline, on the 26th they dismissed us, not for the 15 days we had no notification from them, but we received a decision from the mayor of the municipality”, stated R.U.

She added that the competition did not specify how many members of each community would be accepted.

“There was nothing mentioned about which community I was accepted from… we met the conditions, me and my colleagues, and we were accepted in the regular procedures,” she said.

The official said that they consider the dismissal as illegal and warned of pursuing legal avenues.

“They have dismissed us from work illegally and we are ready to continue with legal procedures,” she declared.

Meanwhile, Xhevdet Haxhiu, head of the Office for Communities and Returns, told KosovaPress that he was not present during the competition, but according to his information, the candidates for the positions were mainly Albanians and only one candidate from the Turkish community was part of the process.

“As far as I know and the information I have there, there were no other applicants, again, as far as I know, one was from the Turkish community and he was very polite and the others were all Albanians,” said Haxhiu.

According to him, based on the decisions of 2023, the ethnic structure for the office positions was 3 Albanians, 2 Bosniaks, 1 from the Roma community, 1 Serb and 1 Turk. He emphasized that the dismissal was made according to the decision of the mayor, which he considers “arbitrary”.

We recall that during the past week, 2 officials in the municipality of Zvecan were dismissed, with the aforementioned justification of the lack of evaluation, training and budget.