After last year's campaign "Our city is our od(b)raz" and the clean-up campaign, the Tourist Organization (TO) of Nikšić, in cooperation with the Ecological Movement "Ozon", the Municipality and the Electric Power Company of Montenegro, is implementing the same campaign this year, which will last from May 14 to June 24. With a symbolic press conference on the shore of the Salt Lake and the presentation of certificates of appreciation to everyone who helped make the campaign successful last year, the start of this year's campaign was made official, which was opened the day before by members of the NGO "Ljubitelji Slanog jezero".
According to Mitar Barać, director of the Nikšić Tourist Board, the campaign, which is being organized in anticipation of the tourist season, will include tourist sites - Slano and Krupac Lake, Rimski and Carev Most, Trebjesa Forest Park, Blace Eco Park, Gornjepoljski Vir and Lukovo.
"I'm glad there are this many of us and I hope there will be even more of us at each event. The point is not just to clean these locations and prepare them for the season, but also to send a message that we are all in this together and to influence the awareness of fellow citizens about how important these locations are to us and how many benefits they can bring to our community," said Barać.
The director of "Ozon", Aleksandar Perović, admitted that last year he was skeptical that the campaign would yield such good results.
"The action was not part of any project. We tried to be on the ground, together with the citizens, to determine what is urgent in Nikšić and solve it. As for local governments, I think this is the only action in Montenegro that is ongoing without any project or funds, which means that our image is clean, and that we have the impression that we are working with increasing capacity," said Perović.
He thanked the citizens, non-governmental activists, and institutions who decided to be part of the campaign, which has an ecological, educational, and touristic component, both last year and this year.
"Our idea is not just to remove the waste and have it there again, but to make the sites that are part of the campaign become something else, just like we prepared the viewpoint towards Risan last year. It is an additional pleasure to implement the first action at this site with the 'Salt Lake Lovers' Association, who opened the campaign both last year and this year," said Perović.
Miladin Goranović, on behalf of the NGO "Ljubitelji Slanog jezera", said that they have started cleaning the route around the lake, that they had a lot of work on the first day and that they expect locals, fishermen and all nature lovers to join them in the action. According to him, the route around the Slanog jezera is completely overgrown, and part of it was last filled in almost 25 years ago. Their goal is to clean the entire route, fill in about 18 kilometers of the road, create a pedestrian and bicycle path, install information boards, and trash cans.
After presenting certificates of appreciation and cleaning up the waste, some of the participants in the action joined members of the NGO "Association of Salt Lake Lovers".
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