"Citizens of Cetinje will be without water all day today" - this is information that appears so often in the public. However, this is not news. Because if you remember that journalistic logic - it's not news when a dog bites a man, but when a man bites a dog, then the news in the case of the Montenegrin capital would be - "Citizens of Cetinje will have water 24 hours a day, every day." Few people remember something like that in the town under Lovcen.
Petar Martinović has been keeping apartments in Cetinje for years, the only registered boarding house in the capital. These days, you can meet him more and more often in the courtyard of the "Danilo I" hospital, filling water bottles, because it is one of the few places in the city that must have water. Visibly angry and bitter, he says that he feels like his ancestors did 100 years ago, when there were several wells in Cetinje, from which the whole town was supplied with water.
"Little by little, they turn off the city's water for the whole day, then turn it on for a while in the evening. It's a horror. How can we live, how can we do anything. Look at me, I have to fill water bottles and carry them to the boarding house, so that allowed the guests to at least wash themselves. However, they don't want to put up with it. They leave the boarding house angry, and they don't pay. And I completely understand them," says Martinović.
Tourists rarely spend the night
He says that there is constant talk about how tourists who come to Cetinje rarely stay overnight.
"At first, the reason given was that there were not enough accommodation facilities. Now there are some, but in vain, when there is no water. Who would stay and pay for a room without being able to wash in the morning and take a shower in the evening," says Martinović.
He says that the citizens of Cetinje thought that the activation of the regional water supply system for the coast would improve the situation, but that it does nothing, because the situation is getting worse and worse every day. In addition to the fact that the city is constantly exposed to restrictions, the people of Cetinje are especially annoyed by the reasons given by Vodovod as the reason for turning off the water. Changing pipes, irrational consumption of water, electrical faults at facilities, irregular payers.
They pay the bills, but they don't have water
Marija Pejović from Cetinje is one of those who regularly settles her accounts with the Waterworks, but this does not guarantee her that the waterworks will regularly deliver water to her.
"I don't know what irritates me more - when they turn off my water, or when they give me the reason why there is no water. How many times have their pumps and pipes failed, and how many times have they been replaced, I would think that Cetinje occupies the area of Frankfurt airport. Then, when they say there is no water, because the gardens are watered too much, I check every time that Cetinje has not by some chance become the native Pannonian plain, so all Montenegrin agriculture has moved to the Cetinje field," says Marija.
Joking aside, Marija is especially angry, because she regularly pays all her obligations to the waterworks.
"I don't know if I should first bathe the children, start the machine, fill the water bottles for the new day, or sit down and cry because I have to survive all this in the 21st century"
"The problems we have with water are catastrophic. I come home from work and I can't do anything. I can't take a shower, turn on the washing machine, wash the dishes, prepare lunch. You simply cannot function normally. In the evening, they turn off your water for an hour , but you can't achieve anything. I don't know if I should first bathe the children, turn on the machine, fill the water bottles for the new day, or sit down and cry because I have to survive all this in the 21st century," says the "Vijesti" interviewee.
Sometimes they "treat" us for the holidays
However, Marija is also lucky because she lives in a one-story house. Those who live in buildings, like Danica Radulov, very often do not have a chance to grab even that hour of water.
"Many times we can't even drink water without turning on the machine. Lately, I don't know what it is. Last summer, we didn't even have daytime restrictions. It's true that we didn't have water during the night, but somewhere, I guess, used to it for years," says Danica. She adds that in the last 30 years, she cannot remember that the city had water 24 hours a day.
"That rarely happened to us. Sometimes they knew that they would 'honor' us for the New Year holidays, or some national holiday and that's all. The worst thing is that we got into a situation where we got used to not having water at night, as if it was something normal," says Danica.
Why is Cetinje exposed to water shortages again these days?
In recent months, two reasons have been cited from Vodovod - either a failure of the pumps or the work that EP was doing on the electrical installations.
The people of Cetinje remain with their long-standing attitude - water is given to Budva, because the pumps break down, it seems, only in the summer...
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