Employees from the Montenegrin IT sector, 115 of them, will soon receive apartments at 50 percent favorable conditions. Private individuals will participate in the financing of the residential complex, the construction of which will begin in June…
Twenty-six-year-old Čedomir Dragićević is one of 115 employees in the Montenegrin IT sector who will solve the housing issue under favorable conditions in the next two years. His employer is part of a group of 19 private IT companies that will start building the so-called Cortex village in Podgorica in June – a complex with five residential buildings for workers.
The importance of this project for me is great, I am young and I am looking to form a family in the near future and provide for self-housing. This initiative came at the right time for us because it offers us to provide the most important step in life in the most convenient way – said Čedomir Dragićević.
Dragićević and his colleagues will achieve savings when buying an apartment on three grounds – in the amount of the interest rate, the value of the construction works, and the employers will repay them part of the interest while they work for them. According to ICT Cortex director Tarik Zaimović, this is the first time in Montenegro that the private sector is helping workers to get a roof over their heads.
What is specific about this project is that its greatest value is that it enables employees to save up to 50 percent of the shared apartment. For example, an employee with all subsidies will pay about 350 euros per month for a two-room apartment… for 25 years – announced Tarik Zaimović.
Apartments range from 80,000 to 150,000, depending on the rank and with what facilities.
Zaimović estimates that companies will set aside a total of seven million euros for interest payments to employees. The project, which they are implementing with a bank and a construction company, is also specific in that 40 percent of the complex will be green areas.
As part of the complex, we have a playground for children, an outdoor gym, fields, a park and a restaurant that will serve the complex – said Zaimović. All of us workers who will be provided with housing participated in the formation of the Cortex village, we had a large number of sessions, interviews with the architect… we did not get a finished solution, so if you want to invest and buy apartments, we already got the opportunity to influence and change the project to our taste – said Dragićević.
The Montenegrin IT sector has been growing strongly in recent years, making millions in profits and having the potential to become a pillar of the domestic economy. Their main problem is the lack of manpower, and Zaimović says that with this project they wanted to show the workers how important they are to them. They hope that other industries will follow their example.
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