As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, Croatian entrepreneur Mijo Pasalic, the owner of the Apfel company, has constructed two apartment buildings in the coastal Dalmatian town of Makarska with apartments that were purchased at half price by his workers who hadn’t managed to get their housing issues resolved and until recently were tenants in unenviable situations. He thus resolved a very significant existential issue for thirteen of his company’s employees.
Given that we haven’t heard of a similar case in more than thirty years of the existence of independent Croatia, and we don’t know whether or not anything similar was ever done by any other employer in the area, Vecernji list went down to Makarska to talk to Croatian entrepreneur Mijo Pasalic and his son Matko, the CEO of Apfel.
”On that day we were celebrating 25 years of Apfel’s existence. This is a family business, and all of us, the whole family, have a rule of conduct when it comes to doing business, and that is to give back a lot to the local community, ie the areas of Makarska and the Makarska Riviera. This is where we function, this is where we make the biggest profit and we think it’s just normal to give back a part of it. I think that’s how it should work and, to be honest, it’s actually how we like it to be,” explained Mijo Pasalic, who has helped a lot in public life in Makarska through various associations, either in sports, culture, or through various humanitarian actions.
However, they decided to take a step forward and, despite the crisis year that is behind us all and the uncertain future, specifically help their workers in resolving the main existential, housing issue that they could not resolve on their own.
”Makarska is very expensive to live in and many people, despite what they do, can’t solve their housing issues if their parents weren’t the ones to have previously solved it. We came up with the idea to help our workers out by building two apartment buildings and making the price acceptable to them. One square metre in our apartments cost us around 1450 euros, the land alone cost us 250 euros per square mere, and a square metre of an apartment will cost our workers a lot less: from 650 to 950 euros,” said Mijo Pasalic, who is very happy that now thirteen families of his workers resolved their housing issues.
They have already signed contracts and have since become the owners of the 60-square-metre apartments in the two new buildings constructed by Croatian entrepreneur Mijo Pasalic.
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