A group of non-governmental organizations submitted today to the competent Parliamentary Committee an Initiative for the control hearing of the Ministers of Sustainable Development and Tourism and Transport and Maritime Affairs Pavle Radulović and Osman Nurković due to, as they said, the devastation of Tara.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) Ecological movement Ozone, Ecological society Breznica, Green home and the Center for the protection and study of birds, are asking for a hearing of Radulović and Mitrović for endangering plant and animal life in the protected area.
Those NGOs submitted the initiative to the Parliamentary Committee for Tourism, Agriculture, Ecology and Spatial Planning.
The NGOs in the Initiative state that in the surroundings of Mateševo, at the construction site of the highway - the Mateševo interchange, the Tara 1 and Tara 2 bridges - the Chinese company China Road & Bridge Corporation (CRBC) is carrying out works that have devastated the terrain in this protected area, polluted the water from Tara, , flora and fauna were damaged or destroyed, and the river, as a protected natural asset, was damaged.
"Through the Strategic Environmental Impact Assessment, which accompanies the Detailed Spatial Plan of the highway, all actors involved in the construction of the highway have been warned that any works in the bed of Tara can devastate the terrain and that in that case there is a possibility that the river Tara is deleted from the list of world biosphere reserves of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)," the Initiative states.
It is added that in that document, all actors involved in the construction of the highway are familiar with the findings of the expert team, which consisted of Montenegrin and Slovenian experts.
NGOs point out that the document states that the Tara basin is on the UNESCO list of world biosphere reserves and that, in accordance with international conventions, Montenegro is obliged to "not intentionally take any measures that may directly or indirectly cause negative consequences for the cultural and natural heritage".
It is stated that the authors of the Strategic Assessment warned that the construction of a highway through the Tara basin area can be considered a violation of the International Convention on the Protection of the World Natural and Cultural Heritage and that this obliges UNESCO to be notified.
"Despite this, publicly released recordings and photographs indicate that works are being carried out at the specified location in violation of regulations and international conventions and that the terrain is being devastated, water, soil, plant and animal life are being damaged and destroyed, and the Tara River, as a protected natural resource, is damages," the Initiative states.
NGOs state that at the same time, all data related to the construction of the highway is classified as secret.
"The professional and lay public do not have the slightest opportunity to find out information about what is happening at the location in question and whose responsibility it will be in the event of complete devastation and damage to the protected natural asset and eventual deletion of Tara from the list of world biosphere reserves of UNESCO", it is said in the Initiative.
NGOs believe that these are clearly issues within the purview of the Parliamentary Committee for Tourism, Agriculture, Ecology and Spatial Planning, which cause ambiguities, dilemmas and disputes of principle.
"In order to clarify these issues, it is necessary for the Committee to convene a session where they will invite the responsible representatives of the Government and ask them to make a statement on the mentioned issues," the statement says.
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