Faced with the facts, the Minister of Sustainable Development and Tourism, Pavle Radulović, admitted that the Tara River was still devastated, and only after more than 20 days after it was confirmed by the UNESCO report. it was rated by the Non-Governmental Sector Affirmation Network (MANS).
Yesterday, after the Government session, Radulović said that "the bed of the Tara River has not been moved, that Tara is not completely endangered and that it will not be removed from the MAB (man and biosphere) list, that it is not true that we practice a policy of impunity".
"Once again, no one ever said that the construction of the highway has no impact on Tara. We claimed that this impact is limited - local, that the vast majority of these impacts are temporary, and that some of the impacts that remain have no effect on the protected areas," he said. yesterday Radulović.
MANS stated that Radulović was persistent in his attempts to mitigate his own responsibility, as well as that of the CRBC itself, for what is happening on Tara.
"NGO MANS expresses satisfaction with the fact that Minister Radulović, pressured by the evaluations coming from international addresses, finally changed his point of view and admitted to the public that the devastation still exists. In addition, the minister said in relation to the (non)work of inspections that it is not practiced" policy of impunity", and that after non-governmental organizations and the media repeatedly claimed that it was obvious that almost no inspection monitoring of the impact of highway construction on the environment was carried out, especially in the area of impact on the Tara River. That the Chinese company and its subcontractors did not suffer almost no consequences due to non-compliance with environmental standards, and it was officially confirmed recently, when the Directorate for Inspection Affairs of the NGO MANS submitted data that its environmental inspection, since the beginning of highway construction, has visited the field only about 70 times in four years. Although it is clear that the environment suffers under the impact of negligent contractors, the environmental inspection imposed minimal fines during that period," MANS announced.
They add that the Directorate for Inspection Affairs refuses to provide any concrete information about what kind of omissions caused the fines.
"Additionally, this does not respect the Constitution of Montenegro either, because information about the state of the environment is hidden from citizens, which is one of a series of shameful examples of the relationship between the institutions of the system and the public. Minister Radulović, on the condition that he feels even the smallest level of responsibility towards the public function which he performs - for which the citizens of Montenegro pay him, he would have to set a good example and request the publication of all data on the state of the environment on and around the highway construction site, which would partly show that he is working in the public interest, and not in the interest of the Chinese company CRBC and of its subcontractors. However, every action of Radulović in connection with the largest infrastructure project in Montenegro so far was aimed at protecting the interests of Chinese and protected domestic companies, and to the detriment of the public interest," the MANS statement concludes.
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